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Jack London - Michael, Brother
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MICHAEL
1
Michael
By E. F. Benson
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
MICHAEL
2
CHAPTER I
Though there was nothing visibly graceful about Michael Comber, he
apparently had the art of giving gracefully. He had already told
his cousin Francis, who sat on the arm of the sofa by his table,
that there was no earthly excuse for his having run into debt; but
now when the moment came for giving, he wrote the cheque quickly
and eagerly, as if thoroughly enjoying it, and passed it over to
him with a smile that was extraordinarily pleasant.
"There you are, then, Francis," he said; "and I take it from you
that that will put you perfectly square again. You've got to write
to me, remember, in two days' time, saying that you have paid those
bills. And for the rest, I'm delighted that you told me about it.
In fact, I should have been rather hurt if you hadn't."
Francis apparently had the art of accepting gracefully, which is
more difficult than the feat which Michael had so successfully
accomplished.
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"Mike, you're a brick," he said. "But then you always are a brick.
Thanks awfully."
Michael got up, and shuffled rather than walked across the room to
the bell by the fireplace. As long as he was sitting down his big
arms and broad shoulders gave the impression of strength, and you
would have expected to find when he got up that he was tall and
largely made. But when he rose the extreme shortness of his legs
manifested itself, and he appeared almost deformed. His hands hung
nearly to his knees; he was heavy, short, lumpish.
"But it's more blessed to give than to receive, Francis," he said.
"I have the best of you there."
"Well, it's pretty blessed to receive when you are in a tight
place, as I was," he said, laughing. "And I am so grateful."
"Yes, I know you are. And it's that which makes me feel rather
cheap, because I don't miss what I've given you. But that's
distinctly not a reason for your doing it again. You'll have tea,
won't you?"
"Why, yes," said Francis, getting up, also, and leaning his elbow
on the chimney-piece, which was nearly on a level with the top of
Michael's head. And if Michael had gracefulness only in the art of
giving, Francis's gracefulness in receiving was clearly of a piece
with the rest of him. He was tall, slim and alert, with the quick,
soft movements of some wild animal. His face, brown with sunburn
and pink with brisk-going blood, was exceedingly handsome in a
boyish and almost effeminate manner, and though he was only
eighteen months younger than his cousin, he looked as if nine or
ten years might have divided their ages.
"But you are a brick, Mike," he said again, laying his long, brown
hand on his cousin's shoulder. "I can't help saying it twice."
MICHAEL
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"Twice more than was necessary," said Michael, finally dismissing
the subject.
The room where they sat was in Michael's flat in Half Moon Street,
and high up in one of those tall, discreet-looking houses. The
windows were wide open on this hot July afternoon, and the bourdon
hum of London, where Piccadilly poured by at the street end, came
in blended and blunted by distance, but with the suggestion of
heat, of movement, of hurrying affairs. The room was very empty of
furniture; there was a rug or two on the parquet floor, a long, low
bookcase taking up the end near the door, a table, a sofa, three or
four chairs, and a piano. Everything was plain, but equally
obviously everything was expensive, and the general impression
given was that the owner had no desire to be surrounded by things
he did not want, but insisted on the superlative quality of the
things he did. The rugs, for instance, happened to be of silk, the
bookcase happened to be Hepplewhite, the piano bore the most
eminent of makers' names. There were three mezzotints on the
walls, a dragon's-blood vase on the high, carved chimney-piece; the
whole bore the unmistakable stamp of a fine, individual taste.
"But there's something else I want to talk to you about, Francis,"
said Michael, as presently afterwards they sat over their tea. "I
can't say that I exactly want your advice, but I should like your
opinion. I've done something, in fact, without asking anybody, but
now that it's done I should like to know what you think about it."
Francis laughed.
"That's you all over, Michael," he said. "You always do a thing
first, if you really mean to do it--which I suppose is moral
courage--and then you go anxiously round afterwards to see if other
people approve, which I am afraid looks like moral cowardice. I go
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on a different plan altogether. I ascertain the opinion of so many
people before I do anything that I end by forgetting what I wanted
to do. At least, that seems a reasonable explanation for the fact
that I so seldom do anything."
Michael looked affectionately at the handsome boy who lounged long-
legged in the chair opposite him. Like many very shy persons, he
had one friend with whom he was completely unreserved, and that was
this cousin of his, for whose charm and insouciant brilliance he
had so adoring an admiration.
He pointed a broad, big finger at him.
"Yes, but when you are like that," he said, "you can just float
along. Other people float you. But I should sink heavily if I did
nothing. I've got to swim all the time."
"Well, you are in the army," said Francis. "That's as much
swimming as anyone expects of a fellow who has expectations. In
fact, it's I who have to swim all the time, if you come to think of
it. You are somebody; I'm not!"
MICHAEL
4
Michael sat up and took a cigarette.
"But I'm not in the army any longer," he said. "That's just what I
am wanting to tell you."
Francis laughed.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "Have you been cashiered or shot or
something?"
"I mean that I wrote and resigned my commission yesterday," said
Michael. "If you had dined with me last night--as, by the way, you
promised to do--I should have told you then."
Francis got up and leaned against the chimney-piece. He was
conscious of not thinking this abrupt news as important as he felt
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he ought to think it. That was characteristic of him; he floated,
as Michael had lately told him, finding the world an extremely
pleasant place, full of warm currents that took you gently forward
without entailing the slightest exertion. But Michael's grave and
expectant face--that Michael who had been so eagerly kind about
meeting his debts for him--warned him that, however gossamer-like
his own emotions were, he must attempt to ballast himself over
this.
"Are you speaking seriously?" he asked.
"Quite seriously. I never did anything that was so serious."
"And that is what you want my opinion about?" he asked. "If so,
you must tell me more, Mike. I can't have an opinion unless you
give me the reasons why you did it. The thing itself--well, the
thing itself doesn't seem to matter so immensely. The significance
of it is why you did it."
Michael's big, heavy-browed face lightened a moment. "For a fellow
who never thinks," he said, "you think uncommonly well. But the
reasons are obvious enough. You can guess sufficient reasons to
account for it."
"Let's hear them anyhow," said Francis.
Michael clouded again.
"Surely they are obvious," he said. "No one knows better than me,
unless it is you, that I'm not like the rest of you. My mind isn't
the build of a guardsman's mind, any more than my unfortunate body
is. Half our work, as you know quite well, consists in being
pleasant and in liking it. Well, I'm not pleasant. I'm not breezy
and cordial. I can't do it. I make a task of what is a pastime to
all of you, and I only shuffle through my task. I'm not popular,
I'm not liked. It's no earthly use saying I am. I don't like the
life; it seems to me senseless. And those who live it don't like
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me. They think me heavy--just heavy. And I have enough
sensitiveness to know it."
MICHAEL
5
Michael need not have stated his reasons, for his cousin could
certainly have guessed them; he could, too, have confessed to the
truth of them. Michael had not the light hand, which is so
necessary when young men work together in a companionship of which
the cordiality is an essential part of the work; neither had he in
the social side of life that particular and inimitable sort of easy
self-confidence which, as he had said just now, enables its owner
to float. Except in years he was not young; he could not manage to
be "clubable"; he was serious and awkward at a supper party; he was
altogether without the effervescence which is necessary in order to
avoid flatness. He did his work also in the same conscientious but
leaden way; officers and men alike felt it. All this Francis knew
perfectly well; but instead of acknowledging it, he tried quite
fruitlessly to smooth it over.
"Aren't you exaggerating?" he asked.
Michael shook his head.
"Oh, don't tone it down, Francis!" he said. "Even if I was
exaggerating--which I don't for a moment admit--the effect on my
general efficiency would be the same. I think what I say is true."
Francis became more practical.
"But you've only been in the regiment three years," he said. "It
won't be very popular resigning after only three years."
"I have nothing much to lose on the score of popularity," remarked
Michael.
There was nothing pertinent that could be consoling here.
"And have you told your father?" asked Francis. "Does Uncle Robert
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know?"
"Yes; I wrote to father this morning, and I'm going down to
Ashbridge to-morrow. I shall be very sorry if he disapproves."
"Then you'll be sorry," said Francis.
"I know, but it won't make any difference to my action. After all,
I'm twenty-five; if I can't begin to manage my life now, you may be
sure I never shall. But I know I'm right. I would bet on my
infallibility. At present I've only told you half my reasons for
resigning, and already you agree with me."
Francis did not contradict this.
"Let's hear the rest, then," he said.
"You shall. The rest is far more important, and rather resembles a
sermon."
Francis appropriately sat down again.
MICHAEL
6
"Well, it's this," said Michael. "I'm twenty-five, and it is time
that I began trying to be what perhaps I may be able to be, instead
of not trying very much--because it's hopeless--to be what I can't
be. I'm going to study music. I believe that I could perhaps do
something there, and in any case I love it more than anything else.
And if you love a thing, you have certainly a better chance of
succeeding in it than in something that you don't love at all. I
was stuck into the army for no reason except that soldiering is
among the few employments which it is considered proper for fellows
in my position--good Lord! how awful it sounds!--proper for me to
adopt. The other things that were open were that I should be a
sailor or a member of Parliament. But the soldier was what father
chose. I looked round the picture gallery at home the other day;
there are twelve Lord Ashbridges in uniform. So, as I shall be
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Lord Ashbridge when father dies, I was stuck into uniform too, to
be the ill-starred thirteenth. But what has it all come to? If
you think of it, when did the majority of them wear their smart
uniforms? Chiefly when they went on peaceful parades or to court
balls, or to the Sir Joshua Reynolds of the period to be painted.
They've been tin soldiers, Francis! You're a tin soldier, and I've
just ceased to be a tin soldier. If there was the smallest chance
of being useful in the army, by which I mean standing up and being
shot at because I am English, I would not dream of throwing it up.
But there's no such chance."
Michael paused a moment in his sermon, and beat out the ashes from
his pipe against the grate.
"Anyhow the chance is too remote," he said. "All the nations with
armies and navies are too much afraid of each other to do more than
growl. Also I happen to want to do something different with my
life, and you can't do anything unless you believe in what you are
doing. I want to leave behind me something more than the portrait
of a tin soldier in the dining-room at Ashbridge. After all, isn't
an artistic profession the greatest there is? For what counts,
what is of value in the world to-day? Greek statues, the Italian
pictures, the symphonies of Beethoven, the plays of Shakespeare.
The people who have made beautiful things are they who are the
benefactors of mankind. At least, so the people who love beautiful
things think."
Francis glanced at his cousin. He knew this interesting vital side
of Michael; he was aware, too, that had anybody except himself been
in the room, Michael could not have shown it. Perhaps there might
be people to whom he could show it but certainly they were not
those among whom Michael's life was passed.
"Go on," he said encouragingly. "You're ripping, Mike."
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"Well, the nuisance of it is that the things I am ripping about
appear to father to be a sort of indoor game. It's all right to
play the piano, if it's too wet to play golf. You can amuse
yourself with painting if there aren't any pheasants to shoot. In
fact, he will think that my wanting to become a musician is much
the same thing as if I wanted to become a billiard-marker. And if
he and I talked about it till we were a hundred years old, he could
MICHAEL
7
never possibly appreciate my point of view."
Michael got up and began walking up and down the room with his
slow, ponderous movement.
"Francis, it's a thousand pities that you and I can't change
places," he said. "You are exactly the son father would like to
have, and I should so much prefer being his nephew. However, you
come next; that's one comfort."
He paused a moment.
"You see, the fact is that he doesn't like me," he said. "He has
no sympathy whatever with my tastes, nor with what I am. I'm an
awful trial to him, and I don't see how to help it. It's pure
waste of time, my going on in the Guards. I do it badly, and I
hate it. Now, you're made for it; you're that sort, and that sort
is my father's sort. But I'm not; no one knows that better than
myself. Then there's the question of marriage, too."
Michael gave a mirthless laugh.
"I'm twenty-five, you see," he said, "and it's the family custom
for the eldest son to marry at twenty-five, just as he's baptised
when he's a certain number of weeks old, and confirmed when he is
fifteen. It's part of the family plan, and the Medes and Persians
aren't in it when the family plan is in question. Then, again, the
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lucky young woman has to be suitable; that is to say, she must be
what my father calls 'one of us.' How I loathe that phrase! So my
mother has a list of the suitable, and they come down to Ashbridge
in gloomy succession, and she and I are sent out to play golf
together or go on the river. And when, to our unutterable relief,
that is over, we hurry back to the house, and I escape to my piano,
and she goes and flirts with you, if you are there. Don't deny it.
And then another one comes, and she is drearier than the last--at
least, I am."
Francis lay back and laughed at this dismal picture of the
rejection of the fittest.
"But you're so confoundedly hard to please, Mike," he said. "There
was an awfully nice girl down at Ashbridge at Easter when I was
there, who was simply pining to take you. I've forgotten her
name."
Michael clicked his fingers in a summary manner.
"There you are!" he said. "You and she flirted all the time, and
three months afterwards you don't even remember her name. If you
had only been me, you would have married her. As it was, she and I
bored each other stiff. There's an irony for you! But as for
pining, I ask you whether any girl in her senses could pine for me.
Look at me, and tell me! Or rather, don't look at me; I can't bear
to be looked at."
Here was one of Michael's morbid sensitivenesses. He seldom forgot
MICHAEL
8
his own physical appearance, the fact of which was to him
appalling. His stumpy figure with its big body, his broad, blunt-
featured face, his long arms, his large hands and feet, his
clumsiness in movement were to him of the nature of a constant
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nightmare, and it was only with Francis and the ease that his
solitary presence gave, or when he was occupied with music that he
wholly lost his self-consciousness in this respect. It seemed to
him that he must be as repulsive to others as he was to himself,
which was a distorted view of the case. Plain without doubt he
was, and of heavy and ungainly build; but his belief in the
finality of his uncouthness was morbid and imaginary, and half his
inability to get on with his fellows, no less than with the maidens
who were brought down in single file to Ashbridge, was due to this.
He knew very well how light-heartedly they escaped to the geniality
and attractiveness of Francis, and in the clutch of his own
introspective temperament he could not free himself from the
handicap of his own sensitiveness, and, like others, take himself
for granted. He crushed his own power to please by the weight of
his judgments on himself.
"So there's another reason to complain of the irony of fate," he
said. "I don't want to marry anybody, and God knows nobody wants
to marry me. But, then, it's my duty to become the father of
another Lord Ashbridge, as if there had not been enough of them
already, and his mother must be a certain kind of girl, with whom I
have nothing in common. So I say that if only we could have
changed places, you would have filled my niche so perfectly, and I
should have been free to bury myself in Leipzig or Munich, and
lived like the grub I certainly am, and have drowned myself in a
sea of music. As it is, goodness knows what my father will say to
the letter I wrote him yesterday, which he will have received this
morning. However, that will soon be patent, for I go down there
to-morrow. I wish you were coming with me. Can't you manage to
for a day or two, and help things along? Aunt Barbara will be
there."
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Francis consulted a small, green morocco pocket-book.
"Can't to-morrow," he said, "nor yet the day after. But perhaps I
could get a few days' leave next week."
"Next week's no use. I go to Baireuth next week."
"Baireuth? Who's Baireuth?" asked Francis.
"Oh, a man I know. His other name was Wagner, and he wrote some
tunes."
Francis nodded.
"Oh, but I've heard of him," he said. "They're rather long tunes,
aren't they? At least I found them so when I went to the opera the
other night. Go on with your plans, Mike. What do you mean to do
after that?"
"Go on to Munich and hear the same tunes over, again. After that I
MICHAEL
9
shall come back and settle down in town and study."
"Play the piano?" asked Francis, amiably trying to enter into his
cousin's schemes.
Michael laughed.
"No doubt that will come into it," he said. "But it's rather as if
you told somebody you were a soldier, and he said: 'Oh, is that
quick march?'"
"So it is. Soldiering largely consists of quick march, especially
when it's more than usually hot."
"Well, I shall learn to play the piano," said Michael.
"But you play so rippingly already," said Francis cordially. "You
played all those songs the other night which you had never seen
before. If you can do that, there is nothing more you want to
learn with the piano, is there?"
"You are talking rather as father will talk," observed Michael.
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"Am I? Well, I seem to be talking sense."
"You weren't doing what you seemed, then. I've got absolutely
everything to learn about the piano."
Francis rose.
"Then it is clear I don't understand anything about it," he said.
"Nor, I suppose, does Uncle Robert. But, really, I rather envy
you, Mike. Anyhow, you want to do and be something so much that
you are gaily going to face unpleasantnesses with Uncle Robert
about it. Now, I wouldn't face unpleasantnesses with anybody about
anything I wanted to do, and I suppose the reason must be that I
don't want to do anything enough."
"The malady of not wanting," quoted Michael.
"Yes, I've got that malady. The ordinary things that one naturally
does are all so pleasant, and take all the time there is, that I
don't want anything particular, especially now that you've been
such a brick--"
"Stop it," said Michael.
"Right; I got it in rather cleverly. I was saying that it must be
rather nice to want a thing so much that you'll go through a lot to
get it. Most fellows aren't like that."
"A good many fellows are jelly-fish," observed Michael.
"I suppose so. I'm one, you know. I drift and float. But I don't
think I sting. What are you doing to-night, by the way?"
MICHAEL
10
"Playing the piano, I hope. Why?"
"Only that two fellows are dining with me, and I thought perhaps
you would come. Aunt Barbara sent me the ticket for a box at the
Gaiety, too, and we might look in there. Then there's a dance
somewhere."
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"Thanks very much, but I think I won't," said Michael. "I'm rather
looking forward to an evening alone."
"And that's an odd thing to look forward to," remarked Francis.
"Not when you want to play the piano. I shall have a chop here at
eight, and probably thump away till midnight."
Francis looked round for his hat and stick.
"I must go," he said. "I ought to have gone long ago, but I didn't
want to. The malady came in again. Most of the world have got it,
you know, Michael."
Michael rose and stood by his tall cousin.
"I think we English have got it," he said. "At least, the English
you and I know have got it. But I don't believe the Germans, for
instance, have. They're in deadly earnest about all sorts of
things--music among them, which is the point that concerns me. The
music of the world is German, you know!"
Francis demurred to this.
"Oh, I don't think so," he said. "This thing at the Gaiety is
ripping, I believe. Do come and see."
Michael resisted this chance of revising his opinion about the
German origin of music, and Francis drifted out into Piccadilly.
It was already getting on for seven o'clock, and the roadway and
pavements were full of people who seemed rather to contradict
Michael's theory that the nation generally suffered from the malady
of not wanting, so eagerly and numerously were they on the quest
for amusement. Already the street was a mass of taxicabs and
private motors containing, each one of them, men and women in
evening dress, hurrying out to dine before the theatre or the
opera. Bright, eager faces peered out, with sheen of silk and
glitter of gems; they all seemed alert and prosperous and keen for
the daily hours of evening entertainment. A crowd similar in
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spirit pervaded the pavements, white-shirted men with coat on arm
stepped in and out of swinging club doors and the example set by
the leisured class seemed copiously copied by those whom desks and
shops had made prisoners all day. The air of the whole town,
swarming with the nation that is supposed to make so grave an
affair of its amusements, was indescribably gay and lighthearted;
the whole city seemed set on enjoying itself. The buses that
boomed along were packed inside and out, and each was placarded
with advertisement of some popular piece at theatre or music-hall.
MICHAEL
11
Inside the Green Park the grass was populous with lounging figures,
who, unable to pay for indoor entertainment, were making the most
of what the coolness of sunset and grass supplied them with gratis;
the newsboards of itinerant sellers contained nothing of more
serious import than the result of cricket matches; and, as the dusk
began to fall, street lamps and signs were lit, like early rising
stars, so that no hint of the gathering night should be permitted
to intrude on the perpetually illuminated city. All that was
sordid and sad, all that was busy (except on these gay errands of
pleasure) was shuffled away out of sight, so that the pleasure
seekers might be excused for believing that there was nothing in
the world that could demand their attention except the need of
amusing themselves successfully. The workers toiled in order that
when the working day was over the fruits of their labour might
yield a harvest of a few hours' enjoyment; silkworms had spun so
that from carriage windows might glimmer the wrappings made from
their cocoons; divers had been imperilled in deep seas so that the
pearls they had won might embellish the necks of these fair
wearers.
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To Francis this all seemed very natural and proper, part of the
recognised order of things that made up the series of sensations
known to him as life. He did not, as he had said, very
particularly care about anything, and it was undoubtedly true that
there was no motive or conscious purpose in his life for which he
would voluntarily have undergone any important stress of discomfort
or annoyance. It was true that in pursuance of his profession
there was a certain amount of "quick marching" and drill to be done
in the heat, but that was incidental to the fact that he was in the
Guards, and more than compensated for by the pleasures that were
also naturally incidental to it. He would have been quite unable
to think of anything that he would sooner do than what he did; and
he had sufficient of the ingrained human tendency to do something
of the sort, which was a matter of routine rather than effort, than
have nothing whatever, except the gratification of momentary whims,
to fill his day. Besides, it was one of the conventions or even
conditions of life that every boy on leaving school "did" something
for a certain number of years. Some went into business in order to
acquire the wealth that should procure them leisure; some, like
himself, became soldiers or sailors, not because they liked guns
and ships, but because to boys of a certain class these professions
supplied honourable employment and a pleasant time. Without being
in any way slack in his regimental duties, he performed them as
many others did, without the smallest grain of passion, and without
any imaginative forecast as to what fruit, if any, there might be
to these hours spent in drill and discipline. He was but one of a
very large number who do their work without seriously bothering
their heads about its possible meaning or application. His
particular job gave a young man a pleasant position and an easy
path to general popularity, given that he was willing to be
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sociable and amused. He was extremely ready to be both the one and
the other, and there his philosophy of life stopped.
And, indeed, it seemed on this hot July evening that the streets
were populated by philosophers like unto himself. Never had
England generally been more prosperous, more secure, more
MICHAEL
12
comfortable. The heavens of international politics were as serene
as the evening sky; not yet was the storm-cloud that hung over
Ireland bigger than a man's hand; east, west, north and south there
brooded the peace of the close of a halcyon day, and the amazing
doings of the Suffragettes but added a slight incentive to the
perusal of the morning paper. The arts flourished, harvests
prospered; the world like a newly-wound clock seemed to be in for a
spell of serene and orderly ticking, with an occasional chime just
to show how the hours were passing.
London was an extraordinarily pleasant place, people were friendly,
amusements beckoned on all sides; and for Francis, as for so many
others, but a very moderate amount of work was necessary to win him
an approved place in the scheme of things, a seat in the slow-
wheeling sunshine. It really was not necessary to want, above all
to undergo annoyances for the sake of what you wanted, since so
many pleasurable distractions, enough to fill day and night twice
over, were so richly spread around.
Some day he supposed he would marry, settle down and become in time
one of those men who presented a bald head in a club window to the
gaze of passers-by. It was difficult, perhaps, to see how you
could enjoy yourself or lead a life that paid its own way in
pleasure at the age of forty, but that he trusted that he would
learn in time. At present it was sufficient to know that in half
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an hour two excellent friends would come to dinner, and that they
would proceed in a spirit of amiable content to the Gaiety. After
that there was a ball somewhere (he had forgotten where, but one of
the others would be sure to know), and to-morrow and to-morrow
would be like unto to-day. It was idle to ask questions of oneself
when all went so well; the time for asking questions was when there
was matter for complaint, and with him assuredly there was none.
The advantages of being twenty-three years old, gay and good-
looking, without a care in the world, now that he had Michael's
cheque in his pocket, needed no comment, still less complaint. He,
like the crowd who had sufficient to pay for a six-penny seat at a
music-hall, was perfectly content with life in general; to-morrow
would be time enough to do a little more work and glean a little
more pleasure.
It was indeed an admirable England, where it was not necessary even
to desire, for there were so many things, bright, cheerful things
to distract the mind from desire. It was a day of dozing in the
sun, like the submerged, scattered units or duets on the grass of
the Green Park, of behaving like the lilies of the field. . . .
Francis found he was rather late, and proceeded hastily to his
mother's house in Savile Row to array himself, if not "like one of
these," like an exceedingly well-dressed young man, who demanded of
his tailor the utmost of his art; with the prospect, owing to
Michael's generosity, of being paid to-morrow.
Michael, when his cousin had left him, did not at once proceed to
his evening by himself with his piano, though an hour before he had
longed to be alone with it and a pianoforte arrangement of the
Meistersingers, of which he had promised himself a complete perusal
MICHAEL
13
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that evening. But Francis's visit had already distracted him, and
he found now that Francis's departure took him even farther away
from his designed evening. Francis, with his good looks and his
gay spirits, his easy friendships and perfect content (except when
a small matter of deficit and dunning letters obscured the sunlight
for a moment), was exactly all that he would have wished to be
himself. But the moment he formulated that wish in his mind, he
knew that he would not voluntarily have parted with one atom of his
own individuality in order to be Francis or anybody else. He was
aware how easy and pleasant life would become if he could look on
it with Francis's eyes, and if the world would look on him as it
looked on his cousin. There would be no more bother. . . . In a
moment, he would, by this exchange, have parted with his own
unhappy temperament, his own deplorable body, and have stepped into
an amiable and prosperous little neutral kingdom that had no
desires and no regrets. He would have been free from all wants,
except such as could be gratified so easily by a little work and a
great capacity for being amused; he would have found himself
excellently fitting the niche into which the rulers of birth and
death had placed him: an eldest son of a great territorial magnate,
who had what was called a stake in the country, and desired nothing
better.
Willingly, as he had said, would he have changed circumstances with
Francis, but he knew that he would not, for any bait the world
could draw in front of him, have changed natures with him, even
when, to all appearance, the gain would so vastly have been on his
side. It was better to want and to miss than to be content. Even
at this moment, when Francis had taken the sunshine out of the room
with his departure, Michael clung to his own gloom and his own
uncouthness, if by getting rid of them he would also have been
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obliged to get rid of his own temperament, unhappy as it was, but
yet capable of strong desire. He did not want to be content; he
wanted to see always ahead of him a golden mist, through which the
shadows of unconjecturable shapes appeared. He was willing and
eager to get lost, if only he might go wandering on, groping with
his big hands, stumbling with his clumsy feet, desiring . . .
There are the indications of a path visible to all who desire.
Michael knew that his path, the way that seemed to lead in the
direction of the ultimate goal, was music. There, somehow, in that
direction lay his destiny; that was the route. He was not like the
majority of his sex and years, who weave their physical and mental
dreams in the loom of a girl's face, in her glance, in the curves
of her mouth. Deliberately, owing chiefly to his morbid
consciousness of his own physical defects, he had long been
accustomed to check the instincts natural to a young man in this
regard. He had seen too often the facility with which others, more
fortunate than he, get delightedly lost in that golden haze; he had
experienced too often the absence of attractiveness in himself.
How could any girl of the London ballroom, he had so frequently
asked himself, tolerate dancing or sitting out with him when there
was Francis, and a hundred others like him, so pleased to take his
place? Nor, so he told himself, was his mind one whit more apt
than his body. It did not move lightly and agreeably with
unconscious smiles and easy laughter. By nature he was monkish, he
MICHAEL
14
was celibate. He could but cease to burn incense at such
ineffectual altars, and help, as he had helped this afternoon, to
replenish the censers of more fortunate acolytes.
This was all familiar to him; it passed through his head unbidden,
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when Francis had left him, like the refrain of some well-known
song, occurring spontaneously without need of an effort of memory.
It was a possession of his, known by heart, and it no longer,
except for momentary twinges, had any bitterness for him. This
afternoon, it is true, there had been one such, when Francis,
gleeful with his cheque, had gone out to his dinner and his theatre
and his dance, inviting him cheerfully to all of them. In just
that had been the bitterness--namely, that Francis had so
overflowing a well-spring of content that he could be cordial in
bidding him cast a certain gloom over these entertainments.
Michael knew, quite unerringly, that Francis and his friends would
not enjoy themselves quite so much if he was with them; there would
be the restraint of polite conversation at dinner instead of
completely idle babble, there would be less outspoken normality at
the Gaiety, a little more decorum about the whole of the boyish
proceedings. He knew all that so well, so terribly well. . . .
His servant had come in with the evening paper, and the implied
suggestion of the propriety of going to dress before he roused
himself. He decided not to dress, as he was going to spend the
evening alone, and, instead, he seated himself at the piano with
his copy of the Meistersingers and, mechanically at first, with the
ragged cloud-fleeces of his reverie hanging about his brain, banged
away at the overture. He had extraordinary dexterity of finger for
one who had had so little training, and his hands, with their great
stretch, made light work of octaves and even tenths. His knowledge
of the music enabled him to wake the singing bird of memory in his
head, and before long flute and horn and string and woodwind began
to make themselves heard in his inner ear. Twice his servant came
in to tell him that his dinner was ready, but Michael had no heed
for anything but the sounds which his flying fingers suggested to
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him. Francis, his father, his own failure in the life that had
been thrust on him were all gone; he was with the singers of
Nuremberg.
CHAPTER II
The River Ashe, after a drowsy and meandering childhood, passed
peacefully among the sedges and marigolds of its water meadows,
suddenly and somewhat disconcertingly grows up and, without any
period of transition and adolescence, becomes, from being a mere
girl of a rivulet, a male and full-blooded estuary of the sea. At
Coton, for instance, the tips of the sculls of a sauntering
pleasure-boat will almost span its entire width, while, but a mile
farther down, you will see stone-laden barges and tall, red-winged
sailing craft coming up with the tide, and making fast to the grey
wooden quay wall of Ashbridge, rough with barnacles. For the reeds
and meadow-sweet of its margin are exchanged the brown and green
growths of the sea, with their sharp, acrid odour instead of the
MICHAEL
15
damp, fresh smell of meadow flowers, and at low tide the podded
bladders of brown weed and long strings of marine macaroni, among
which peevish crabs scuttle sideways, take the place of the grass
and spires of loosestrife; and over the water, instead of singing
larks, hang white companies of chiding seagulls. Here at high tide
extends a sheet of water large enough, when the wind blows up the
estuary, to breed waves that break in foam and spray against the
barges, while at the ebb acres of mud flats are disclosed on which
the boats lean slanting till the flood lifts them again and makes
them strain at the wheezing ropes that tie them to the quay.
A year before the flame of war went roaring through Europe in
unquenchable conflagration it would have seemed that nothing could
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possibly rouse Ashbridge from its red-brick Georgian repose. There
was never a town so inimitably drowsy or so sternly uncompetitive.
A hundred years ago it must have presented almost precisely the
same appearance as it did in the summer of 1913, if we leave out of
reckoning a few dozen of modern upstart villas that line its
outskirts, and the very inconspicuous railway station that hides
itself behind the warehouses near the river's bank. Most of the
trains, too, quite ignore its existence, and pass through it on
their way to more rewarding stopping-places, hardly recognising it
even by a spurt of steam from their whistles, and it is only if you
travel by those that require the most frequent pauses in their
progress that you will be enabled to alight at its thin and
depopulated platform.
Just outside the station there perennially waits a low-roofed and
sanguine omnibus that under daily discouragement continues to hope
that in the long-delayed fulness of time somebody will want to be
driven somewhere. (This nobody ever does, since the distance to
any house is so small, and a porter follows with luggage on a
barrow.) It carries on its floor a quantity of fresh straw, in the
manner of the stage coaches, in which the problematic passenger,
should he ever appear, will no doubt bury his feet. On its side,
just below the window that is not made to open, it carries the
legend that shows that it belongs to the Comber Arms, a hostelry so
self-effacing that it is discoverable only by the sharpest-eyed of
pilgrims. Narrow roadways, flanked by proportionately narrower
pavements, lie ribbon-like between huddled shops and squarely-
spacious Georgian houses; and an air of leisure and content,
amounting almost to stupefaction, is the moral atmosphere of the
place.
On the outskirts of the town, crowning the gentle hills that lie to
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the north and west, villas in acre plots, belonging to business men
in the county town some ten miles distant, "prick their Cockney
ears" and are strangely at variance with the sober gravity of the
indigenous houses. So, too, are the manners and customs of their
owners, who go to Stoneborough every morning to their work, and
return by the train that brings them home in time for dinner. They
do other exotic and unsuitable things also, like driving swiftly
about in motors, in playing golf on the other side of the river at
Coton, and in having parties at each other's houses. But apart
from them nobody ever seems to leave Ashbridge (though a stroll to
the station about the time that the evening train arrives is a
MICHAEL
16
recognised diversion) or, in consequence, ever to come back.
Ashbridge, in fact, is self-contained, and desires neither to
meddle with others nor to be meddled with.
The estuary opposite the town is some quarter of a mile broad at
high tide, and in order to cross to the other side, where lie the
woods and park of Ashbridge House, it is necessary to shout and
make staccato prancings in order to attract the attention of the
antique ferryman, who is invariably at the other side of the river
and generally asleep at the bottom of his boat. If you are strong-
lunged and can prance and shout for a long time, he may eventually
stagger to his feet, come across for you and row you over.
Otherwise you will stand but little chance of arousing him from his
slumbers, and you will stop where you are, unless you choose to
walk round by the bridge at Coton, a mile above.
Periodical attempts are made by the brisker inhabitants of
Ashbridge, who do not understand its spirit, to substitute for this
aged and ineffectual Charon someone who is occasionally awake, but
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nothing ever results from these revolutionary moves, and the
requests addressed to the town council on the subject are never
heard of again. "Old George" was ferryman there before any members
of the town council were born, and he seems to have established a
right to go to sleep on the other side of the river which is now
inalienable from him. Besides, asleep or awake, he is always
perfectly sober, which, after all, is really one of the first
requirements for a suitable ferryman. Even the representations of
Lord Ashbridge himself who, when in residence, frequently has
occasion to use the ferry when crossing from his house to the town,
failed to produce the smallest effect, and he was compelled to
build a boathouse of his own on the farther bank, and be paddled
across by himself or one of the servants. Often he rowed himself,
for he used to be a fine oarsman, and it was good for the lounger
on the quay to see the foaming prow of his vigorous progress and
the dignity of physical toil.
In all other respects, except in this case of "Old George," Lord
Ashbridge's wishes were law to the local authorities, for in this
tranquil East-coast district the spirit of the feudal system with a
beneficent lord and contented tenants strongly survived. It had
triumphed even over such modern innovations as railroads, for Lord
Ashbridge had the undoubted right to stop any train he pleased by
signal at Ashbridge station. This he certainly enjoyed doing; it
fed his sense of the fitness of things to progress along the
platform with his genial, important tiptoe walk, and elbows
squarely stuck out, to the carriage that was at once reserved for
him, to touch the brim of his grey top-hat (if travelling up to
town) to the obsequious guard, and to observe the heads of
passengers who wondered why their express was arrested, thrust out
of carriage windows to look at him. A livened footman, as well as
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a valet, followed him, bearing a coat and a rug and a morning or
evening paper and a dispatch-box with a large gilt coronet on it,
and bestowed these solaces to a railway journey on the empty seats
near him. And not only his sense of fitness was hereby fed, but
that also of the station-master and the solitary porter and the
newsboy, and such inhabitants of Ashbridge as happened to have
MICHAEL
17
strolled on to the platform. For he was THEIR Earl of Ashbridge,
kind, courteous and dominant, a local king; it was all very
pleasant.
But this arrest of express trains was a strictly personal
privilege; when Lady Ashbridge or Michael travelled they always
went in the slow train to Stoneborough, changed there and abided
their time on the platform like ordinary mortals. Though he could
undoubtedly have extended his rights to the stopping of a train for
his wife or son, he wisely reserved this for himself, lest it
should lose prestige. There was sufficient glory already (to probe
his mind to the bottom) for Lady Ashbridge in being his wife; it
was sufficient also for Michael that he was his son.
It may be inferred that there was a touch of pomposity about this
admirable gentleman, who was so excellent a landlord and so hard
working a member of the British aristocracy. But pomposity would
be far too superficial a word to apply to him; it would not
adequately connote his deep-abiding and essential conviction that
on one of the days of Creation (that, probably, on which the decree
was made that there should be Light) there leaped into being the
great landowners of England.
But Lord Ashbridge, though himself a peer, by no means accepted the
peerage en bloc as representing the English aristocracy; to be, in
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his phrase, "one of us" implied that you belonged to certain well-
ascertained families where brewers and distinguished soldiers had
no place, unless it was theirs already. He was ready to pay all
reasonable homage to those who were distinguished by their
abilities, their riches, their exalted positions in Church and
State, but his homage to such was transfused with a courteous
condescension, and he only treated as his equals and really revered
those who belonged to the families that were "one of us."
His wife, of course, was "one of us," since he would never have
permitted himself to be allied to a woman who was not, though for
beauty and wisdom she might have been Aphrodite and Athene rolled
compactly into one peerless identity. As a matter of fact, Lady
Ashbridge had not the faintest resemblance to either of these
effulgent goddesses. In person she resembled a camel, long and
lean, with a drooping mouth and tired, patient eyes, while in mind
she was stunned. No idea other than an obvious one ever had birth
behind her high, smooth forehead, and she habitually brought
conversation to a close by the dry enunciation of something
indubitably true, which had no direct relation to the point under
discussion. But she had faint, ineradicable prejudices, and
instincts not quite dormant. There was a large quantity of mild
affection in her nature, the quality of which may be illustrated by
the fact that when her father died she cried a little every day
after breakfast for about six weeks. Then she did not cry any
more. It was impossible not to like what there was of her, but
there was really very little to like, for she belonged heart and
soul to the generation and the breeding among which it is enough
for a woman to be a lady, and visit the keeper's wife when she has
a baby.
MICHAEL
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18
But though there was so little of her, the balance was made up for
by the fact that there was so much of her husband. His large,
rather flamboyant person, his big white face and curling brown
beard, his loud voice and his falsetto laugh, his absolutely
certain opinions, above all the fervency of his consciousness of
being Lord Ashbridge and all which that implied, completely filled
any place he happened to be in, so that a room empty except for him
gave the impression of being almost uncomfortably crowded. This
keen consciousness of his identity was naturally sufficient to make
him very good humoured, since he was himself a fine example of the
type that he admired most. Probably only two persons in the world
had the power of causing him annoyance, but both of these, by an
irony of fate that it seemed scarcely possible to consider
accidental, were closely connected with him, for one was his
sister, the other his only son.
The grounds of their potentiality in this respect can be easily
stated. Barbara Comber, his sister (and so "one of us"), had
married an extremely wealthy American, who, in Lord Ashbridge's
view, could not be considered one of anybody at all; in other
words, his imagination failed to picture a whole class of people
who resembled Anthony Jerome. He had hoped when his sister
announced her intention of taking this deplorable step that his
future brother-in-law would at any rate prove to be a snob--he had
a vague notion that all Americans were snobs--and that thus Mr.
Jerome would have the saving grace to admire and toady him. But
Mr. Jerome showed no signs of doing anything of the sort; he
treated him with an austere and distant politeness that Lord
Ashbridge could not construe as being founded on admiration and a
sense of his own inferiority, for it was so clearly founded on
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dislike. That, however, did not annoy Lord Ashbridge, for it was
easy to suppose that poor Mr. Jerome knew no better. But Barbara
annoyed him, for not only had she shown herself a renegade in
marrying a man who was not "one of us," but with all the advantages
she had enjoyed since birth of knowing what "we" were, she gloried
in her new relations, saying, without any proper reticence about
the matter, that they were Real People, whose character and wits
vastly transcended anything that Combers had to show.
Michael was an even more vexatious case, and in moments of
depression his father thought that he would really turn in his
grave at the dismal idea of Michael having stepped into his
honourable shoes. Physically he was utterly unlike a Comber, and
his mind, his general attitude towards life seemed to have diverged
even farther from that healthy and unreflective pattern. Only this
morning his father had received a letter from him that summed
Michael up, that fulfilled all the doubts and fears that had hung
about him; for after three years in the Guards he had, without
consultation with anybody, resigned his commission on the
inexplicable grounds that he wanted to do something with his life.
To begin with that was rankly heretical; if you were a Comber there
was no need to do anything with your life; life did everything for
you. . . . And what this un-Comberish young man wanted to do with
his life was to be a musician. That musicians, artists, actors,
had a right to exist Lord Ashbridge did not question. They were no
doubt (or might be) very excellent people in their way, and as a
MICHAEL
19
matter of fact he often recognised their existence by going to the
opera, to the private view of the Academy, or to the play, and he
took a very considerable pride of proprietorship in his own
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admirable collection of family portraits. But then those were
pictures of Combers; Reynolds and Romney and the rest of them had
enjoyed the privilege of perpetuating on their canvases these big,
fine men and charming women. But that a Comber--and that one
positively the next Lord Ashbridge--should intend to devote his
energies to an artistic calling, and allude to that scheme as doing
something with his life, was a thing as unthinkable as if the
butler had developed a fixed idea that he was "one of us."
The blow was a recent one; Michael's letter had only reached his
father this morning, and at the present moment Lord Ashbridge was
attempting over a cup of tea on the long south terrace overlooking
the estuary to convey--not very successfully--to his wife something
of his feelings on the subject. She, according to her custom, was
drinking a little hot water herself, and providing her Chinese pug
with a mixture of cream and crumbled rusks. Though the dog was of
undoubtedly high lineage, Lord Ashbridge rather detested her.
"A musical career!" he exclaimed, referring to Michael's letter.
"What sort of a career for a Comber is a musical career? I shall
tell Michael pretty roundly when he arrives this evening what I
think of it all. We shall have Francis next saying that he wants
to resign, too, and become a dentist."
Lady Ashbridge considered this for a moment in her stunned mind.
"Dear me, Robert, I hope not," she said. "I do not think it the
least likely that Francis would do anything of the kind. Look,
Petsy is better; she has drunk her cream and rusks quite up. I
think it was only the heat."
He gave a little good-humoured giggle of falsetto laughter.
"I wish, Marion," he said, "that you could manage to take your mind
off your dog for a moment and attend to me. And I must really ask
you not to give your Petsy any more cream, or she will certainly be
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sick."
Lady Ashbridge gave a little sigh.
"All gone, Petsy," she said.
"I am glad it has all gone," said he, "and we will hope it won't
return. But about Michael now!"
Lady Ashbridge pulled herself together.
"Yes, poor Michael!" she said. "He is coming to-night, is he not?
But just now you were speaking of Francis, and the fear of his
wanting to be a dentist!"
"Well, I am now speaking of Michael's wanting to be a musician. Of
course that is utterly out of the question. If, as he says, he has
MICHAEL
20
sent in his resignation, he will just have to beg them to cancel
it. Michael seems not to have the slightest idea of the duties
which his birth and position entail on him. Unfitted for the life
he now leads . . . waste of time. . . . Instead he proposes to go
to Baireuth in August, and then to settle down in London to study!"
Lady Ashbridge recollected the almanac.
"That will be in September, then," she said. "I do not think I was
ever in London in September. I did not know that anybody was."
"The point, my dear, is not how or where you have been accustomed
to spend your Septembers," said her husband. "What we are talking
about is--"
"Yes, dear, I know quite well what we are talking about," said she.
"We are talking about Michael not studying music all September."
Lord Ashbridge got up and began walking across the terrace opposite
the tea-table with his elbows stuck out and his feet lifted rather
high.
"
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Michael doesn't seem to realise that he is not Tom or Dick or
Harry," said he. "Music, indeed! I'm musical myself; all we
Combers are musical. But Michael is my only son, and it really
distresses me to see how little sense he has of his
responsibilities. Amusements are all very well; it is not that I
want to cut him off his amusements, but when it comes to a career--"
Lady Ashbridge was surreptitiously engaged in pouring out a little
more cream for Petsy, and her husband, turning rather sooner than
she had expected, caught her in the act.
"Do not give Petsy any more cream," he said, with some asperity; "I
absolutely forbid it."
Lady Ashbridge quite composedly replaced the cream-jug.
"Poor Petsy!" she observed.
"I ask you to attend to me, Marion," he said.
"But I am attending to you very well, Robert," said she, "and I
understand you perfectly. You do not want Michael to be a musician
in September and wear long hair and perhaps play at concerts. I am
sure I quite agree with you, for such a thing would be as unheard
of in my family as in yours. But how do you propose to stop it?"
"I shall use my authority," he said, stepping a little higher.
"Yes, dear, I am sure you will. But what will happen if Michael
doesn't pay any attention to your authority? You will be worse off
than ever. Poor Michael is very obedient when he is told to do
anything he intends to do, but when he doesn't agree it is
difficult to do anything with him. And, you see, he is quite
independent of you with my mother having left him so much money.
MICHAEL
21
Poor mamma!"
Lord Ashbridge felt strongly about this.
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"It was a most extraordinary disposition of her property for your
mother to make," he observed. "It has given Michael an
independence which I much deplore. And she did it in direct
opposition to my wishes."
This touched on one of the questions about which Lady Ashbridge had
her convictions. She had a mild but unalterable opinion that when
anybody died, all that they had previously done became absolutely
flawless and laudable.
"
Mamma did as she thought right with her property," she said, "and
it is not for us to question it. She was conscientiousness itself.
You will have to excuse my listening to any criticism you may feel
inclined to make about her, Robert."
"Certainly, my dear. I only want you to listen to me about
Michael. You agree with me on the impossibility of his adopting a
musical career. I cannot, at present, think so ill of Michael as
to suppose that he will defy our joint authority."
"Michael has a great will of his own," she remarked. "He gets that
from you, Robert, though he gets his money from his grandmother."
The futility of further discussion with his wife began to dawn on
Lord Ashbridge, as it dawned on everybody who had the privilege of
conversing with her. Her mind was a blind alley that led nowhere;
it was clear that she had no idea to contribute to the subject
except slightly pessimistic forebodings with which, unfortunately,
he found himself secretly disposed to agree. He had always felt
that Michael was an uncomfortable sort of boy; in other words, that
he had the inconvenient habit of thinking things out for himself,
instead of blindly accepting the conclusions of other people.
Much as Lord Ashbridge valued the sturdy independence of character
which he himself enjoyed displaying, he appreciated it rather less
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highly when it was manifested by people who were not sensible
enough to agree with him. He looked forward to Michael's arrival
that evening with the feeling that there was a rebellious standard
hoisted against the calm blue of the evening sky, and remembering
the advent of his sister he wondered whether she would not join the
insurgent. Barbara Jerome, as has been remarked, often annoyed her
brother; she also genially laughed at him; but Lord Ashbridge,
partly from affection, partly from a loyal family sense of
clanship, always expected his sister to spend a fortnight with him
in August, and would have been much hurt had she refused to do so.
Her husband, however, so far from spending a fortnight with his
brother-in-law, never spent a minute in his presence if it could
possibly be avoided, an arrangement which everybody concerned
considered to be wise, and in the interests of cordiality.
"And Barbara comes this evening as well as Michael, does she not?"
he said. "I hope she will not take Michael's part in his absurd
MICHAEL
22
scheme."
"I have given Barbara the blue room," said Lady Ashbridge, after a
little thought. "I am afraid she may bring her great dog with her.
I hope he will not quarrel with Petsy. Petsy does not like other
dogs."
The day had been very hot, and Lord Ashbridge, not having taken any
exercise, went off to have a round of golf with the professional of
the links that lay not half a mile from the house. He considered
exercise an essential part of the true Englishman's daily
curriculum, and as necessary a contribution to the traditional mode
of life which made them all what they were--or should be--as a bath
in the morning or attendance at church on Sunday. He did not care
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so much about playing golf with a casual friend, because the casual
friend, as a rule, casually beat him--thus putting him in an un-
English position--and preferred a game with this first-class
professional whose duty it was--in complete violation of his
capacities--to play just badly enough to be beaten towards the end
of the round after an exciting match. It required a good deal of
cleverness and self-control to accomplish this, for Lord Ashbridge
was a notably puerile performer, but he generally managed it with
tact and success, by dint of missing absurdly easy putts, and (here
his skill came in) by pulling and slicing his ball into far-distant
bunkers. Throughout the game it was his business to keep up a
running fire of admiring ejaculations such as "Well driven, my
lord," or "A fine putt, my lord. Ah! dear me, I wish I could putt
like that," though occasionally his chorus of praise betrayed him
into error, and from habit he found himself saying: "Good shot, my
lord," when my lord had just made an egregious mess of things. But
on the whole he devised so pleasantly sycophantic an atmosphere as
to procure a substantial tip for himself, and to make Lord
Ashbridge conscious of being a very superior performer. Whether at
the bottom of his heart he knew he could not play at all, he
probably did not inquire; the result of his matches and his
opponent's skilfully-showered praise was sufficient for him. So
now he left the discouraging companionship of his wife and Petsy
and walked swingingly across the garden and the park to the links,
there to seek in Macpherson's applause the self-confidence that
would enable him to encounter his republican sister and his musical
son with an unyielding front.
His spirits mounted rapidly as he went. It pleased him to go
jauntily across the lawn and reflect that all this smooth turf was
his, to look at the wealth of well-tended flowers in his garden and
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know that all this polychromatic loveliness was bred in Lord
Ashbridge's borders (and was graciously thrown open to the gaze of
the admiring public on Sunday afternoon, when they were begged to
keep off the grass), and that Lord Ashbridge was himself. He liked
reminding himself that the towering elms drew their leafy verdure
from Lord Ashbridge's soil; that the rows of hen-coops in the park,
populous and cheeping with infant pheasants, belonged to the same
fortunate gentleman who in November would so unerringly shoot them
down as they rocketted swiftly over the highest of his tree-tops;
that to him also appertained the long-fronted Jacobean house which
MICHAEL
23
stood so commandingly upon the hill-top, and glowed with all the
mellowness of its three-hundred-years-old bricks. And his
satisfaction was not wholly fatuous nor entirely personal; all
these spacious dignities were insignia (temporarily conferred on
him, like some order, and permanently conferred on his family) of
the splendid political constitution under which England had made
herself mistress of an empire and the seas that guarded it.
Probably he would have been proud of belonging to that even if he
had not been "one of us"; as it was, the high position which he
occupied in it caused that pride to be slightly mixed with the
pride that was concerned with the notion of the Empire belonging to
him and his peers.
But though he was the most profound of Tories, he would truthfully
have professed (as indeed he practised in the management of his
estates) the most Liberal opinions as to schemes for the
amelioration of the lower classes. Only, just as the music he was
good enough to listen to had to be played for him, so the tenants
and farmers had to be his dependents. He looked after them very
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well indeed, conceiving this to be the prime duty of a great
landlord, but his interest in them was really proprietary. It was
of his bounty, and of his complete knowledge of what his duties as
"one of us" were, that he did so, and any legislation which
compelled him to part with one pennyworth of his property for the
sake of others less fortunate he resisted to the best of his
ability as a theft of what was his. The country, in fact, if it
went to the dogs (and certain recent legislation distinctly seemed
to point kennelwards), would go to the dogs because ignorant
politicians, who were most emphatically not "of us," forced him and
others like him to recognise the rights of dependents instead of
trusting to their instinctive fitness to dispense benefits not as
rights but as acts of grace. If England trusted to her aristocracy
(to put the matter in a nutshell) all would be well with her in the
future even as it had been in the past, but any attempt to curtail
their splendours must inevitably detract from the prestige and
magnificence of the Empire. . . . And he responded suitably to the
obsequious salute of the professional, and remembered that the
entire golf links were his property, and that the Club paid a
merely nominal rental to him, just the tribute money of a penny
which was due to Caesar.
For the next hour or two after her husband had left her, Lady
Ashbridge occupied herself in the thoroughly lady-like pursuit of
doing nothing whatever; she just existed in her comfortable chair,
since Barbara might come any moment, and she would have to
entertain her, which she frequently did unawares. But as Barbara
continued not to come, she took up her perennial piece of
needlework, feeling rather busy and pressed, and had hardly done so
when her sister-in-law arrived.
She was preceded by an enormous stag-hound, who, having been shut
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up in her motor all the way from London, bounded delightedly, with
the sense of young limbs released, on to the terrace, and made wild
leaps in a circle round the horrified Petsy, who had just received
a second saucerful of cream. Once he dashed in close, and with a
MICHAEL
24
single lick of his tongue swept the saucer dry of nutriment, and
with hoarse barkings proceeded again to dance corybantically about,
while Lady Ashbridge with faint cries of dismay waved her
embroidery at him. Then, seeing his mistress coming out of the
French window from the drawing-room, he bounded calf-like towards
her, and Petsy, nearly sick with cream and horror, was gathered to
Lady Ashbridge's bosom.
"My dear Barbara," she said, "how upsetting your dog is! Poor
Petsy's heart is beating terribly; she does not like dogs. But I
am very pleased to see you, and I have given you the blue room."
It was clearly suitable that Barbara Jerome should have a large
dog, for both in mind and body she was on the large scale herself.
She had a pleasant, high-coloured face, was very tall, enormously
stout, and moved with great briskness and vigour. She had
something to say on any subject that came on the board; and, what
was less usual in these days of universal knowledge, there was
invariably some point in what she said. She had, in the ordinary
sense of the word, no manners at all, but essentially made up for
this lack by her sincere and humourous kindliness. She saw with
acute vividness the ludicrous side of everybody, herself included,
and to her mind the arch-humourist of all was her brother, whom she
was quite unable to take seriously. She dressed as if she had
looted a milliner's shop and had put on in a great hurry anything
that came to hand. She towered over her sister-in-law as she
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kissed her, and Petsy, safe in her citadel, barked shrilly.
"My dear, which is the blue room?" she said. "I hope it is big
enough for Og and me. Yes, that is Og, which is short for dog. He
takes two mutton-chops for dinner, and a little something during
the night if he feels disposed, because he is still growing. Tony
drove down with me, and is in the car now. He would not come in
for fear of seeing Robert, so I ventured to tell them to take him a
cup of tea there, which he will drink with the blinds down, and
then drive back to town again. He has been made American
ambassador, by the way, and will go in to dinner before Robert. My
dear, I can think of few things which Robert is less fitted to bear
than that. However, we all have our crosses, even those of us who
have our coronets also."
Lady Ashbridge's hospitable instincts asserted themselves. "But
your husband must come in," she said. "I will go and tell him.
And Robert has gone to play golf."
Barbara laughed.
"I am quite sure Tony won't come in," she said. "I promised him he
shouldn't, and he only drove down with me on the express
stipulation that no risks were to be run about his seeing Robert.
We must take no chances, so let him have his tea quietly in the
motor and then drive away again. And who else is there? Anybody?
Michael?"
"Michael comes this evening."
MICHAEL
25
"I am glad; I am particularly fond of Michael. Also he will play
to us after dinner, and though I don't know one note from another,
it will relieve me of sitting in a stately circle watching Robert
cheat at patience. I always find the evenings here rather trying;
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they remind me of being in church. I feel as if I were part of a
corporate body, which leads to misplaced decorum. Ah! there is the
sound of Tony's retreating motor; his strategic movement has come
off. And now give me some news, if you can get in a word. Dear
me, there is Robert coming back across the lawn. What a mercy that
Tony did not leave the motor. Robert always walks as if he was
dancing a minuet. Look, there is Og imitating him! Or is he
stalking him, thinking he is an enemy. Og, come here!"
She whistled shrilly on her fingers, and rose to greet her brother,
whom Og was still menacing, as he advanced towards her with
staccato steps. Barbara, however, got between Og and his prey, and
threw her parasol at him.
"My dear, how are you?" she said. "And how did the golf go? And
did you beat the professional?"
He suspected flippancy here, and became markedly dignified.
"An excellent match," he said, "and Macpherson tells me I played a
very sound game. I am delighted to see you, Barbara. And did
Michael come down with you?"
"No. I drove from town. It saves time, but not expense, with your
awful trains."
"And you are well, and Mr. Jerome?" he asked. He always called his
brother-in-law Mr. Jerome, to indicate the gulf between them.
Barbara gave a little spurt of laughter.
"Yes, his excellency is quite well," she said. "You must call him
excellency now, my dear."
"Indeed! That is a great step."
"Considering that Tony began as an office-boy. How richly
rewarding you are, my dear. And shan't I make an odd ambassadress!
I haven't been to a Court since the dark ages, when I went to those
beloved States. We will practise after dinner, dear, and you and
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Marion shall be the King and Queen, and I will try to walk
backwards without tumbling on my head. You will like being the
King, Robert. And then we will be ourselves again, all except Og,
who shall be Tony and shall go out of the room before you."
He gave his treble little giggle, for on the whole it answered
better not to be dignified with Barbara, whenever he could remember
not to be; and Lady Ashbridge, still nursing Petsy, threw a
bombshell of the obvious to explode the conversation.
"Og has two mutton-chops for his dinner," she said, "and he is
growing still. Fancy!"
MICHAEL
26
Lord Ashbridge took a refreshing glance at the broad stretch of
country that all belonged to him.
"I am rather glad to have this opportunity of talking to you, my
dear Barbara," he said, "before Michael comes."
"His train gets in half an hour before dinner" said Lady Ashbridge.
"He has to change at Stoneborough."
"Quite so. I heard from Michael this morning, saying that he has
resigned his commission in the Guards, and is going to take up
music seriously."
Barbara gave a delighted exclamation.
"But how perfectly splendid!" she said. "Fancy a Comber doing
anything original! Michael and I are the only Combers who ever
have, since Combers 'arose from out the azure main' in the year
one. I married an American; that's something, though it's not up to
Michael!"
"That is not quite my view of it," said he. "As for its being
original, it would be original enough if Marion eloped with a
Patagonian."
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Lady Ashbridge let fall her embroidery at this monstrous
suggestion.
"You are talking very wildly, Robert," she said, in a pained voice.
"My dear, get on with your sacred carpet," said he. "I am talking
to Barbara. I have already ascertained your--your lack of views on
the subject. I was saying, Barbara, that mere originality is not a
merit."
"No, you never said that," remarked Lady Ashbridge.
"I should have if you had allowed me to. And as for your saying
that he has done it, Barbara, that is very wide of the mark, and I
intend shall continue to be so."
"Dear great Bashaw, that is just what you said to me when I told
you I was going to marry his Excellency. But I did. And I think
it is a glorious move on Michael's part. It requires brain to find
out what you like, and character to go and do it. Combers haven't
got brains as a rule, you see. If they ever had any, they have
degenerated into conservative instincts."
He again refreshed himself with the landscape. The roofs of
Ashbridge were visible in the clear sunset. . . . Ashbridge paid
its rents with remarkable regularity.
"That may or may not be so," he said, forgetting for a moment the
danger of being dignified. "But Combers have position."
Barbara controlled herself admirably. A slight tremor shook her,
MICHAEL
27
which he did not notice.
"Yes, dear," she said. "I allow that Combers have had for many
generations a sort of acquisitive cunning, for all we possess has
come to us by exceedingly prudent marriages. They have also--I am
an exception here--the gift of not saying very much, which
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certainly has an impressive effect, even when it arises from not
having very much to say. They are sticky; they attract wealth, and
they have the force called vis inertiae, which means that they
invest their money prudently. You should hear Tony--well, perhaps
you had better not hear Tony. But now here is Michael showing that
he has got tastes. Can you wonder that I'm delighted? And not
only has he got tastes, but he has the strength of character to
back them. Michael, in the Guards too! It was a perfect farce,
and he's had the sense to see it. He hated his duties, and he
hated his diversions. Now Francis--"
"I am afraid Michael has always been a little jealous of Francis,"
remarked his father.
This roused Barbara; she spoke quite seriously:
"If you really think that, my dear," she said, "you have the
distinction of being the worst possible judge of character that the
world has ever known. Michael might be jealous of anybody else,
for the poor boy feels his physical awkwardness most sensitively,
but Francis is just the one person he really worships. He would do
anything in the world for him."
The discussion with Barbara was being even more fruitless than that
with his wife, and Lord Ashbridge rose.
"All I can do, then, is to ask you not to back Michael up," he
said.
"My dear, he won't need backing up. He's a match for you by
himself. But if Michael, after thoroughly worsting you, asks me my
opinion, I shall certainly give it him. But he won't ask my
opinion first. He will strew your limbs, Robert, over this
delightful terrace."
"Michael's train is late," said Lady Ashbridge, hearing the stable
clock strike. "He should have been here before this."
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Barbara had still a word to say, and disregarded this quencher.
"But don't think, Robert," she said, "that because Michael resists
your wishes and authority, he will be enjoying himself. He will
hate doing it, but that will not stop him."
Lord Ashbridge was not a bully; he had merely a profound sense of
his own importance.
"We will see about resistance," he said.
Barbara was not so successful on this occasion, and exploded
MICHAEL
28
loudly:
"You will, dear, indeed," she said.
Michael meantime had been travelling down from London without
perturbing himself over the scene with his father which he knew lay
before him. This was quite characteristic of him; he had a
singular command over his imagination when he had made up his mind
to anything, and never indulged in the gratuitous pain of
anticipation. Today he had an additional bulwark against such
self-inflicted worries, for he had spent his last two hours in town
at the vocal recital of a singer who a month before had stirred the
critics into rhapsody over her gift of lyric song. Up till now he
had had no opportunity of hearing her; and, with the panegyrics
that had been showered on her in his mind, he had gone with the
expectation of disappointment. But now, an hour afterwards, the
wheels of the train sang her songs, and in the inward ear he could
recapture, with the vividness of an hallucination, the timbre of
that wonderful voice and also the sweet harmonies of the pianist
who accompanied her.
The hall had been packed from end to end, and he had barely got to
his seat, the only one vacant in the whole room, when Miss Sylvia
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Falbe appeared, followed at once by her accompanist, whose name
occurred nowhere on the programme. Two neighbours, however, who
chatted shrilly during the applause that greeted them, informed him
that this was Hermann, "dear Hermann; there is no one like him!"
But it occurred to Michael that the singer was like him, though she
was fair and he dark. But his perception of either of them
visually was but vague; he had come to hear and not to see.
Neither she nor Hermann had any music with them, and Hermann just
glanced at the programme, which he put down on the top of the
piano, which, again unusually, was open. Then without pause they
began the set of German songs--Brahms, Schubert, Schumann--with
which the recital opened. And for one moment, before he lost
himself in the ecstasy of hearing, Michael found himself
registering the fact that Sylvia Falbe had one of the most charming
faces he had ever seen. The next he was swallowed up in melody.
She had the ease of the consummate artist, and each note, like the
gates of the New Jerusalem, was a pearl, round and smooth and
luminous almost, so that it was as if many-coloured light came from
her lips. Nor was that all; it seemed as if the accompaniment was
made by the song itself, coming into life with the freshness of the
dawn of its creation; it was impossible to believe that one mind
directed the singer and another the pianist, and if the voice was
an example of art in excelsis, not less exalted was the perfection
of the player. Not for a moment through the song did he take his
eyes off her; he looked at her with an intensity of gaze that
seemed to be reading the emotion with which the lovely melody
filled her. For herself, she looked straight out over the hall,
with grey eyes half-closed, and mouth that in the pauses of her
song was large and full-lipped, generously curving, and face that
seemed lit with the light of the morning she sang of. She was the
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song; Michael thought of her as just that, and the pianist who
MICHAEL
29
watched and understood her so unerringly was the song, too. They
had for him no identity of their own; they were as remote from
everyday life as the mind of Schumann which they made so vivid. It
was then that they existed.
The last song of the group she sang in English, for it was "Who is
Sylvia?" There was a buzz of smiles and whispers among the front
row in the pause before it, and regaining her own identity for a
moment, she smiled at a group of her friends among whom clearly it
was a cliche species of joke that she should ask who Sylvia was,
and enumerate her merits, when all the time she was Sylvia.
Michael felt rather impatient at this; she was not anybody just now
but a singer. And then came the divine inevitable simplicity of
perfect words and the melody preordained for them. The singer, as
he knew, was German, but she had no trace of foreign accent. It
seemed to him that this was just one miracle the more; she had
become English because she was singing what Shakespeare wrote.
The next group, consisting of modern French songs, appeared to
Michael utterly unworthy of the singer and the echoing piano. If
you had it in you to give reality to great and simple things, it
was surely a waste to concern yourself with these little morbid,
melancholy manikins, these marionettes. But his emotions being
unoccupied he attended more to the manner of the performance, and
in especial to the marvellous technique, not so much of the singer,
but of the pianist who caused the rain to fall and the waters
reflect the toneless grey skies. He had never, even when listening
to the great masters, heard so flawless a comprehension as this
anonymous player, incidentally known as Hermann, exhibited. As far
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as mere manipulation went, it was, as might perhaps be expected,
entirely effortless, but effortless no less was the understanding
of the music. It happened. . . . It was like that.
All of this so filled Michael's mind as he travelled down that
evening to Ashbridge, that he scarcely remembered the errand on
which he went, and when it occurred to him it instantly sank out of
sight again, lost in the recollection of the music which he had
heard to-day and which belonged to the art that claimed the
allegiance of his soul. The rattle of the wheels was alchemised
into song, and as with half-closed eyes he listened to it, there
swam across it now the full face of the singer, now the profile of
the pianist, that had stood out white and intent against the dark
panelling behind his head. He had gleaned one fact at the box-
office as he hurried out to catch his train: this Hermann was the
singer's brother, a teacher of the piano in London, and apparently
highly thought of.
CHAPTER III
Michael's train, as his mother had so infallibly pronounced, was
late, and he had arrived only just in time to hurry to his room and
dress quickly, in order not to add to his crimes the additional one
of unpunctuality, for unpunctuality, so Lord Ashbridge held, was
the politeness not only of kings, but of all who had any pretence
MICHAEL
30
to decent breeding. His father gave him a carefully-iced welcome,
his mother the tip of her long, camel-like lips, and they waited
solemnly for the appearance of Aunt Barbara, who, it would seem,
had forfeited her claims to family by her marriage. A man-servant
and a half looked after each of them at dinner, and the twelve Lord
Ashbridges in uniform looked down from their illuminated frames on
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their degenerate descendant.
The only bright spot in this portentous banquet was Aunt Barbara,
who had chosen that evening, with what intention may possibly be
guessed, to put on an immense diamond tiara and a breastplate of
rubies, while Og, after one futile attempt to play with the
footmen, yielded himself up to the chilling atmosphere of good
breeding, and ate his mutton-chops with great composure. But Aunt
Barbara, fortified by her gems, ate an excellent dinner, and talked
all the time with occasional bursts of unexplained laughter.
Afterwards, when Michael was left alone with his father, he found
that his best efforts at conversation elicited only monosyllabic
replies, and at last, in the despairing desire to bring things to a
head, he asked him if he had received his letter. An affirmative
monosyllable, followed by the hissing of Lord Ashbridge's cigarette
end as he dropped it into his coffee cup, answered him, and he
perceived that the approaching storm was to be rendered duly
impressive by the thundery stillness that preceded it. Then his
father rose, and as he passed Michael, who held the door open for
him, said:
"If you can spare the time, Michael, I would like to have a talk
with you when your mother and aunt have gone to bed."
That was not very long delayed; Michael imagined that Aunt Barbara
must have had a hint, for before half-past ten she announced with a
skilfully suppressed laugh that she was about to retire, and kissed
Michael affectionately. Both her laugh and her salute were
encouraging; he felt that he was being backed up. Then a
procession of footmen came into the room bearing lemonade and soda
water and whiskey and a plate of plain biscuits, and the moment
after he was alone with his father.
Lord Ashbridge rose and walked, very tall and majestic, to the
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fireplace, where he stood for a moment with his back to his son.
Then he turned round.
"Now about this nonsense of your resigning your commission,
Michael," he said. "I don't propose to argue about it, and I am
just going to tell you. If, as you have informed me, you have
actually sent it in, you will write to-morrow with due apologies
and ask that it may be withdrawn. I will see your letter before
you send it."
Michael had intended to be as quiet and respectful as possible,
consistent with firmness, but a sentence here gave him a spasm of
anger.
"I don't know what you mean, sir," he said, "by saying 'if I have
MICHAEL
31
sent it in.' You have received my letter in which I tell you that
I have done so."
Already, even at the first words, there was bad blood between them.
Michael's face had clouded with that gloom which his father would
certainly call sulky, and for himself he resented the tone of
Michael's reply. To make matters worse he gave his little falsetto
cackle, which no doubt was intended to convey the impression of
confident good humour. But there was, it must be confessed, very
little good humour about it, though he still felt no serious doubt
about the result of this interview.
"I'm afraid, perhaps, then, that I did not take your letter quite
seriously, my dear Michael," he said, in the bantering tone that
froze Michael's cordiality completely up. "I glanced through it; I
saw a lot of nonsense--or so it struck me--about your resigning
your commission and studying music; I think you mentioned Baireuth,
and settling down in London afterwards."
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"Yes. I said all that," said Michael. "But you make a mistake if
you do not see that it was written seriously."
His father glanced across at him, where he sat with his heavy,
plain face, his long arms and short legs, and the sight merely
irritated him. With his passion for convention (and one of the
most important conventions was that Combers should be fine,
strapping, normal people) he hated the thought that it was his son
who presented that appearance. And his son's mind seemed to him at
this moment as ungainly as his person. Again, very unwisely, he
laughed, still thinking to carry this off by the high hand.
"Yes, but I can't take that rubbish seriously," he said. "I am
asking your permission now to inquire, without any nonsense, into
what you mean."
Michael frowned. He felt the insincerity of his father's laugh,
and rebelled against the unfairness of it. The question, he knew
well, was sarcastically asked, the flavour of irony in the
"permission to inquire" was not there by accident. To speak like
that implied contempt of his opposition; he felt that he was being
treated like a child over some nursery rebellion, in which,
subsequently, there is no real possibility of disobedience. He
felt his anger rising in spite of himself.
"If you refer to it as rubbish, sir, there is the end of the
matter."
"Ah! I thought we should soon agree," said Lord Ashbridge,
chuckling.
"You mistake me," said Michael. "There is the end of the matter,
because I won't discuss it any more, if you treat me like this. I
will say good night, if you intend to persist in the idea that you
can just brush my resolves away like that."
This clearly took his father aback; it was a perfectly dignified
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MICHAEL
32
and proper attitude to take in the face of ridicule, and Lord
Ashbridge, though somewhat an adept at the art of self-deception--
as, for instance, when he habitually beat the golf professional--
could not disguise from himself that his policy had been to laugh
and blow away Michael's absurd ideas. But it was abundantly clear
at this moment that this apparently easy operation was out of his
reach.
He got up with more amenity in his manner than he had yet shown,
and laid his hand on Michael's shoulder as he stood in front of
him, evidently quite prepared to go away.
"Come, my dear Michael. This won't do," he said. "I thought it
best to treat your absurd schemes with a certain lightness, and I
have only succeeded in irritating you."
Michael was perfectly aware that he had scored. And as his object
was to score he made another criticism.
"When you say 'absurd schemes,' sir," he said, with quiet respect,
"are you not still laughing at them?"
Lord Ashbridge again retreated strategically.
"Very well; I withdraw absurd," he said. "Now sit down again, and
we will talk. Tell me what is in your mind."
Michael made a great effort with himself. He desired, in the
secret, real Michael, to be reasonable and cordial, to behave
filially, while all the time his nerves were on edge with his
father's ridicule, and with his instinctive knowledge of his
father's distaste for him.
"Well, it's like this, father," he said. "I'm doing no good as I
am. I went into the Guards, as you know, because it was the right
thing to do. A business man's son is put into business for the
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same reason. And I'm not good at it."
Michael paused a moment.
"My heart isn't in it," he said, "and I dislike it. It seems to me
useless. We're for show. And my heart is quite entirely in music.
It's the thing I care for more than anything else."
Again he paused; all that came so easily to his tongue when he was
speaking to Francis was congealed now when he felt the contempt
with which, though unexpressed, he knew he inspired his father.
Lord Ashbridge waited with careful politeness, his eyes fixed on
the ceiling, his large person completely filling his chair, just as
his atmosphere filled the room. He said nothing at all until the
silence rang in Michael's ears.
"That is all I can tell you," he said at length.
Lord Ashbridge carefully conveyed the ash from his cigarette to the
MICHAEL
33
fireplace before he spoke. He felt that the time had come for his
most impressive effort.
"Very well, then, listen to me," he said. "What you suffer from,
Michael, is a mere want of self-confidence and from modesty. You
don't seem to grasp--I have often noticed this--who you are and
what your importance is--an importance which everybody is willing
to recognise if you will only assume it. You have the privileges
of your position, which you don't sufficiently value, but you have,
also, the responsibilities of it, which I am afraid you are
inclined to shirk. You haven't got the large view; you haven't the
sense of patriotism. There are a great many things in my position--
the position into which you will step--which I would much sooner
be without. But we have received a tradition, and we are bound to
hand it on intact. You may think that this has nothing to do with
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your being in the Guards, but it has. We"--and he seemed to swell
a little--"we are bound in honour to take the lead in the service
of our country, and we must do it whether we like it or not. We
have to till, with our own efforts, 'our goodly heritage.' You
have to learn the meaning of such words as patriotism, and caste,
and duty."
Lord Ashbridge thought that he was really putting this very well
indeed, and he had the sustaining consciousness of sincerity. He
entirely believed what he said, and felt that it must carry
conviction to anyone who listened to it with anything like an open
mind. The only thing that he did not allow for was that he
personally immensely enjoyed his social and dominant position,
thinking it indeed the only position which was really worth having.
This naturally gave an aid to comprehension, and he did not take
into account that Michael was not so blessed as he, and indeed
lacked this very superior individual enlightenment. But his own
words kindled the flame of this illumination, and without noticing
the blank stolidity of Michael's face he went on with gathering
confidence:
"I am sure you are high-minded, my dear Michael," he said. "And it
is to your high-mindedness that I--yes, I don't mind saying it--
that I appeal. In a moment of unreflectiveness you have thrown
overboard what I am sure is real to you, the sense, broadly
speaking, that you are English and of the highest English class,
and have intended to devote yourself to more selfish and pleasure-
loving aims, and to dwell in a tinkle of pleasant sounds that
please your ear; and I'm sure I don't wonder, because, as your
mother and I both know, you play charmingly. But I feel confident
that your better mind does not really confuse the mere diversions
of life with its serious issues."
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Michael suddenly rose to his feet.
"Father, I'm afraid this is no use at all," he said. "All that I
feel, and all that I can't say, I know is unintelligible to you.
You have called it rubbish once, and you think it is rubbish
still."
Lord Ashbridge's eloquence was suddenly arrested. He had been
MICHAEL
34
cantering gleefully along, and had the very distinct impression of
having run up against a stone wall. He dismounted, hurt, but in no
way broken.
"I am anxious to understand you, Michael," he said.
"Yes, father, but you don't," said he. "You have been explaining
me all wrong. For instance, I don't regard music as a diversion.
That is the only explanation there is of me."
"And as regards my wishes and my authority?" asked his father.
Michael squared his shoulders and his mind.
"I am exceedingly sorry to disappoint you in the matter of your
wishes," he said; "but in the matter of your authority I can't
recognise it when the question of my whole life is at stake. I
know that I am your son, and I want to be dutiful, but I have my
own individuality as well. That only recognises the authority of
my own conscience."
That seemed to Lord Ashbridge both tragic and ludicrous.
Completely subservient himself to the conventions which he so much
enjoyed, it was like the defiance of a child to say such things.
He only just checked himself from laughing again.
"I refuse to take that answer from you," he said.
"I have no other to give you," said Michael. "But I should like to
say once more that I am sorry to disobey your wishes."
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The repetition took away his desire to laugh. In fact, he could
not have laughed.
"I don't want to threaten you, Michael," he said. "But you may
know that I have a very free hand in the disposal of my property."
"Is that a threat?" asked Michael.
"It is a hint."
"Then, father, I can only say that I should be perfectly satisfied
with anything you may do," said Michael. "I wish you could leave
everything you have to Francis. I tell you in all sincerity that I
wish he had been my elder brother. You would have been far better
pleased with him."
Lord Ashbridge's anger rose. He was naturally so self-complacent
as to be seldom disposed to anger, but its rarity was not due to
kindliness of nature.
"I have before now noticed your jealousy of your cousin," he
observed.
Michael's face went white.
MICHAEL
35
"That is infamous and untrue, father," he said.
Lord Ashbridge turned on him.
"Apologise for that," he said.
Michael looked up at his high towering without a tremor.
"I wait for the withdrawal of your accusation that I am jealous of
Francis," he replied.
There was a dead silence. Lord Ashbridge stood there in swollen
and speechless indignation, and Michael faced him undismayed. . . .
And then suddenly to the boy there came an impulse of pure pity for
his father's disappointment in having a son like himself. He saw
with the candour which was so real a part of him how hopeless it
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must be, to a man of his father's mind, to have a millstone like
himself unalterably bound round his neck, fit to choke and drown
him.
"Indeed, I am not jealous of Francis, father," he said, "and I
speak quite truthfully when I say how I sympathise with you in
having a son like me. I don't want to vex you. I want to make the
best of myself."
Lord Ashbridge stood looking exactly like his statue in the market-
place at Ashbridge.
"If that is the case, Michael," he said, "it is within your power.
You will write the letter I spoke about."
Michael paused a moment as if waiting for more. It did not seem to
him possible that his appeal should bear no further fruit than
that. But it was soon clear that there was no more to come.
"I will wish you good night, father," he said.
Sunday was a day on which Lord Ashbridge was almost more himself
than during the week, so shining and public an example did he
become of the British nobleman. Instead of having breakfast,
according to the middle-class custom, rather later than usual, that
solid sausagy meal was half an hour earlier, so that all the
servants, except those whose presence in the house was imperatively
necessary for purposes of lunch, should go to church. Thus "Old
George" and Lord Ashbridge's private boat were exceedingly busy for
the half-hour preceding church time, the last boat-load holding the
family, whose arrival was the signal for service to begin. Lady
Ashbridge, however, always went on earlier, for she presided at the
organ with the long, camel-like back turned towards the
congregation, and started playing a slow, melancholy voluntary when
the boy who blew the bellows said to her in an ecclesiastical
whisper: "His lordship has arrived, my lady." Those of the
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household who could sing (singing being construed in the sense of
making a loud and cheerful noise in the throat) clustered in the
choir-pews near the organ, while the family sat in a large, square
MICHAEL
36
box, with a stove in the centre, amply supplied with prayer-books
of the time when even Protestants might pray for Queen Caroline.
Behind them, separated from the rest of the church by an ornamental
ironwork grille, was the Comber chapel, in which antiquarians took
nearly as much pleasure as Lord Ashbridge himself. Here reclined a
glorious company of sixteenth century knights, with their
honourable ladies at their sides, unyielding marble bolsters at
their heads, and grotesque dogs at their feet. Later, when their
peerage was conferred, they lost a little of their yeoman
simplicity, and became peruked and robed and breeched; one, indeed,
in the age of George III., who was blessed with poetical
aspirations, appeared in bare feet and a Roman toga with a scroll
of manuscript in his hand; while later again, mere tablets on the
walls commemorated their almost uncanny virtues.
And just on the other side of the grille, but a step away, sat the
present-day representatives of the line, while Lady Ashbridge
finished the last bars of her voluntary, Lord Ashbridge himself and
his sister, large and smart and comely, and Michael beside them,
short and heavy, with his soul full of the aspirations his father
neither could nor cared to understand. According to his invariable
custom, Lord Ashbridge read the lessons in a loud, sonorous voice,
his large, white hands grasping the wing-feathers of the brass
eagle, and a great carnation in his buttonhole; and when the time
came for the offertory he put a sovereign in the open plate
himself, and proceeded with his minuet-like step to go round the
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church and collect the gifts of the encouraged congregation. He
followed all the prayers in his book, he made the responses in a
voice nearly as loud as that in which he read the lessons; he sang
the hymns with a curious buzzing sound, and never for a moment did
he lose sight of the fact that he was the head of the Comber
family, doing his duty as the custom of the Combers was, and
setting an example of godly piety. Afterwards, as usual, he would
change his black coat, eat a good lunch, stroll round the gardens
(for he had nothing to say to golf on Sunday), and in the evening
the clergyman would dine with him, and would be requested to say
grace both before and after the meal. He knew exactly the proper
mode of passing the Sunday for the landlord on his country estate,
and when Lord Ashbridge knew that a thing was proper he did it with
invariable precision.
Michael, of course, was in disgrace; his father, pending some
further course of action, neither spoke to him nor looked at him;
indeed, it seemed doubtful whether he would hand him the offertory
plate, and it was perhaps a pity that he unbent even to this
extent, for Michael happened to have none of the symbols of
thankfulness about his person, and he saw a slight quiver pass
through Aunt Barbara's hymn-book. After a rather portentous lunch,
however, there came some relief, for his father did not ask his
company on the usual Sunday afternoon stroll, and Aunt Barbara
never walked at all unless she was obliged. In consequence, when
the thunderstorm had stepped airily away across the park, Michael
joined her on the terrace, with the intention of talking the
situation over with her.
Aunt Barbara was perfectly willing to do this, and she opened the
MICHAEL
37
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discussion very pleasantly with peals of laughter.
"My dear, I delight in you," she said; "and altogether this is the
most entertaining day I have ever spent here. Combers are supposed
to be very serious, solid people, but for unconscious humour there
isn't a family in England or even in the States to compare with
them. Our lunch just now; if you could put it into a satirical
comedy called The Aristocracy it would make the fortune of any
theatre."
A dawning smile began to break through Michael's tragedy face.
"I suppose it was rather funny," he said. "But really I'm wretched
about it, Aunt Barbara."
"My dear, what is there to be wretched about? You might have been
wretched if you had found you couldn't stand up to your father, but
I gather, though I know nothing directly, that you did. At least,
your mother has said to me three times, twice on the way to church
and once coming back: 'Michael has vexed his father very much.'
And the offertory plate, my dear, and, as I was saying, lunch! I
am in disgrace too, because I said perfectly plainly yesterday that
I was on your side; and there we were at lunch, with your father
apparently unable to see either you or me, and unconscious of our
presence. Fancy pretending not to see me! You can't help seeing
me, a large, bright object like me! And what will happen next?
That's what tickles me to death, as they say on my side of the
Atlantic. Will he gradually begin to perceive us again, like
objects looming through a fog, or shall we come into view suddenly,
as if going round a corner? And you are just as funny, my dear,
with your long face, and air of depressed determination. Why be
heavy, Michael? So many people are heavy, and none of them can
tell you why."
It was impossible not to feel the unfreezing effect of this.
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Michael thawed to it, as he would have thawed to Francis.
"Perhaps they can't help it, Aunt Barbara," he said. "At least, I
know I can't. I really wish I could learn how to. I--I don't see
the funny side of things till it is pointed out. I thought lunch a
sort of hell, you know. Of course, it was funny, his appearing not
to see either of us. But it stands for more than that; it stands
for his complete misunderstanding of me."
Aunt Barbara had the sense to see that the real Michael was
speaking. When people were being unreal, when they were pompous or
adopting attitudes, she could attend to nothing but their
absurdity, which engrossed her altogether. But she never laughed
at real things; real things were not funny, but were facts.
"He quite misunderstands," went on Michael, with the eagerness with
which the shy welcome comprehension. "He thinks I can make my mind
like his if I choose; and if I don't choose, or rather can't
choose, he thinks that his wishes, his authority, should be
sufficient to make me act as if it was. Well, I won't do that. He
may go on,"--and that pleasant smile lit up Michael's plain face--
MICHAEL
38
"he may go on being unaware of my presence as long as he pleases.
I am very sorry it should be so, but I can't help it. And the
worst of it is, that opposition of that sort--his sort--makes me
more determined than ever."
Aunt Barbara nodded.
"And your friends?" she asked. "What will they think?"
Michael looked at her quite simply and directly.
"Friends?" he said. "I haven't got any."
"Ah, my dear, that's nonsense!" she said.
"I wish it was. Oh, Francis is a friend, I know. He thinks me an
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odd old thing, but he likes me. Other people don't. And I can't
see why they should. I'm sure it's my fault. It's because I'm
heavy. You said I was, yourself."
"Then I was a great ass," remarked Aunt Barbara. "You wouldn't be
heavy with people who understood you. You aren't heavy with me,
for instance; but, my dear, lead isn't in it when you are with your
father."
"But what am I to do, if I'm like that?" asked the boy.
She held up her large, fat hand, and marked the points off on her
fingers.
"Three things," she said. "Firstly, get away from people who don't
understand you, and whom, incidentally, you don't understand.
Secondly, try to see how ridiculous you and everybody else always
are; and, thirdly, which is much the most important, don't think
about yourself. If I thought about myself I should consider how
old and fat and ugly I am. I'm not ugly, really; you needn't be
foolish and tell me so. I should spoil my life by trying to be
young, and only eating devilled codfish and drinking hot plum-
juice, or whatever is the accepted remedy for what we call obesity.
We're all odd old things, as you say. We can only get away from
that depressing fact by doing something, and not thinking about
ourselves. We can all try not to be egoists. Egoism is the really
heavy quality in the world."
She paused a moment in this inspired discourse and whistled to Og,
who had stretched his weary limbs across a bed of particularly fine
geraniums.
"There!" she said, pointing, "if your dog had done that, you would
be submerged in depression at the thought of how vexed your father
would be. That would be because you are thinking of the effect on
yourself. As it's my dog that has done it--dear me, they do look
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squashed now he has got up--you don't really mind about your
father's vexation, because you won't have to think about yourself.
That is wise of you; if you were a little wiser still, you would
picture to yourself how ridiculous I shall look apologising for Og.
MICHAEL
39
Kindly kick him, Michael; he will understand. Naughty! And as for
your not having any friends, that would be exceedingly sad, if you
had gone the right way to get them and failed. But you haven't.
You haven't even gone among the people who could be your friends.
Your friends, broadly speaking, must like the same sort of things
as you. There must be a common basis. You can't even argue with
somebody, or disagree with somebody unless you have a common ground
to start from. If I say that black is white, and you think it is
blue, we can't get on. It leads nowhere. And, finally--"
She turned round and faced him directly.
"Finally, don't be so cross, my dear," she said.
"But am I?" asked he.
"Yes. You don't know it, or else probably, since you are a very
decent fellow, you wouldn't be. You expect not to be liked, and
that is cross of you. A good-humoured person expects to be liked,
and almost always is. You expect not to be understood, and that's
dreadfully cross. You think your father doesn't understand you; no
more he does, but don't go on thinking about it. You think it is a
great bore to be your father's only son, and wish Francis was
instead. That's cross; you may think it's fine, but it isn't, and
it is also ungrateful. You can have great fun if you will only be
good-tempered!"
"How did you know that--about Francis, I mean?" asked Michael.
"Does it happen to be true? Of course it does. Every cross young
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man wishes he was somebody else."
"No, not quite that," began Michael.
"Don't interrupt. It is sufficiently accurate. And you think
about your appearance, my dear. It will do quite well. You might
have had two noses, or only one eye, whereas you have two rather
jolly ones. And do try to see the joke in other people, Michael.
You didn't see the joke in your interview last night with your
father. It must have been excruciatingly funny. I don't say it
wasn't sad and serious as well. But it was funny too; there were
points."
Michael shook his head.
"I didn't see them," he said.
"But I should have, and I should have been right. All dignity is
funny, simply because it is sham. When dignity is real, you don't
know it's dignity. But your father knew he was being dignified,
and you knew you were being dignified. My dear, what a pair of
you!"
Michael frowned.
"But is nothing serious, then?" he asked. "Surely it was serious
MICHAEL
40
enough last night. There was I in rank rebellion to my father, and
it vexed him horribly; it did more, it grieved him."
She laid her hand on Michael's knee.
"As if I didn't know that!" she said. "We're all sorry for that,
though I should have been much sorrier if you had given in and
ceased to vex him. But there it is! Accept that, and then, my
dear, swiftly apply yourself to perceive the humour of it. And
now, about your plans!"
"I shall go to Baireuth on Wednesday, and then on to Munich," began
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Michael.
"That, of course. Perhaps you may find the humour of a Channel
crossing. I look for it in vain. Yet I don't know. . . . The man
who puts on a yachting-cap, and asks if there's a bit of a sea on.
It proves to be the case, and he is excessively unwell. I must
look out for him next time I cross. And then?"
"Then I shall settle in town and study. Oh, here's my father
coming home."
Lord Ashbridge approached down the terrace. He stopped for a
moment at the desecrated geranium bed, saw the two sitting
together, and turned at right angles and went into the house.
Almost immediately a footman came out with a long dog-lead and
advanced hesitatingly to Og. Og was convinced that he had come to
play with him, and crouched and growled and retreated and advanced
with engaging affability. Out of the windows of the library looked
Lord Ashbridge's baleful face. . . . Aunt Barbara swayed out of
her chair, and laid a trembling hand on Michael's shoulder.
"I shall go and apologise for Og," she said. "I shall do it quite
sincerely, my dear. But there are points."
CHAPTER IV
Michael practised a certain mature and rather elderly precision in
the ordinary affairs of daily life. His habits were almost unduly
tidy and punctual; he answered letters by return of post, he never
mislaid things nor tore up documents which he particularly desired
should be preserved; he kept his gold in a purse and his change in
a trousers-pocket, and in matters of travelling he always arrived
at stations with plenty of time to spare, and had such creature
comforts as he desired for his journey in a neat Gladstone bag
above his head. He never travelled first-class, for the very
simple and adequate reason that, though very well off, he preferred
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to spend his money in ways that were more productive of usefulness
or pleasure; and thus, when he took his place in the corner of a
second-class compartment of the Dover-Ostend express on the
Wednesday morning following, he was the only occupant of it.
Probably he had never felt so fully at liberty, nor enjoyed a
MICHAEL
41
keener zest for life and the future. For the first time he had
asserted his own indisputable right to stand on his own feet, and
though he was genuinely sorry for his father's chagrin at not being
able to tuck him up in the family coach, his own sense of
independence could not but wave its banners. There had been a
second interview, no less fruitless than the first, and Lord
Ashbridge had told him that when next his presence was desired at
home, he would be informed of the fact. His mother had cried in a
mild, trickling fashion, but it was quite obvious that in her heart
of hearts she was more concerned with a bilious attack of peculiar
intensity that had assailed Petsy. She wished Michael would not be
so disobedient and vex his father, but she was quite sure that
before long some formula, in diplomatic phrase, would be found on
which reconciliation could be based; whereas it was highly
uncertain whether any formula could be found that would produce the
desired effect on Petsy, whose illness she attributed to the shock
of Og's sudden and disconcerting appearance on Saturday, when all
Petsy's nervous force was required to digest the copious cream.
Consequently, though she threw reproachful glances at Michael,
those directed at Barbara, who was the cause of the acuter tragedy,
were pointed with more penetrating blame. Indeed, it is
questionable whether Lady Ashbridge would have cried at all over
Michael's affairs had not Petsy's also been in so lamentable and
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critical a state.
Just as the train began to move out of the station a young man
rushed across the platform, eluded the embrace of the guard who
attempted to stop him with amazing agility, and jumped into
Michael's compartment. He slammed the door after him, and leaned
out, apparently looking for someone, whom he soon saw.
"Just caught it, Sylvia," he shouted. "Send on my luggage, will
you? It's in the taxi still, I think, and I haven't paid the man.
Good-bye, darling."
He waved to her till the curving line took the platform out of
sight, and then sat down with a laugh, and eyes of friendly
interest for Michael.
"Narrow squeak, wasn't it?" he said gleefully. "I thought the
guard had collared me. And I should have missed Parsifal."
Michael had recognised him at once as he rushed across the
platform; his shouting to Sylvia had but confirmed the recognition;
and here on the day of his entering into his new kingdom of liberty
was one of its citizens almost thrown into his arms. But for the
moment his old invincible habit of shyness and sensitiveness
forbade any responsive lightness of welcome, and he was merely
formal, merely courteous.
"And all your luggage left behind," he said. "Won't you be
dreadfully uncomfortable?"
"Uncomfortable? Why?" asked Falbe. "I shall buy a handkerchief
and a collar every day, and a shirt and a pair of socks every other
day till it arrives."
MICHAEL
42
Michael felt a sudden, daring impulse. He remembered Aunt
Barbara's salutary remarks about crossness being the equivalent of
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thinking about oneself. And the effort that it cost him may be
taken as the measure of his solitary disposition.
"But you needn't do that," he said, "if--if you will be good enough
to borrow of me till your things come."
He blurted it out awkwardly, almost brusquely, and Falbe looked
slightly amused at this wholly surprising offer of hospitality.
"But that's awfully good of you," he said, laughing and saying
nothing direct about his acceptance. "It implies, too, that you
are going to Baireuth. We travel together, then, I hope, for it is
dismal work travelling alone, isn't it? My sister tells me that
half my friends were picked up in railway carriages. Been there
before?"
Michael felt himself lured from the ordinary aloofness of attitude
and demeanour, which had been somewhat accustomed to view all
strangers with suspicion. And yet, though till this moment he had
never spoken to him, he could hardly regard Falbe as a stranger,
for he had heard him say on the piano what his sister understood by
the songs of Brahms and Schubert. He could not help glancing at
Falbe's hands, as they busied themselves with the filling and
lighting of a pipe, and felt that he knew something of those long,
broad-tipped fingers, smooth and white and strong. The man himself
he found to be quite different to what he had expected; he had seen
him before, eager and intent and anxious-faced, absorbed in the
task of following another mind; now he looked much younger, much
more boyish.
"No, it's my first visit to Baireuth," he said, "and I can't tell
you how excited I am about it. I've been looking forward to it so
much that I almost expect to be disappointed."
Falbe blew out a cloud of smoke and laughter.
"Oh, you're safe enough," he said. "Baireuth never disappoints.
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It's one of the facts--a reliable fact. And Munich? Do you go to
Munich afterwards?"
"Yes. I hope so."
Falbe clicked with his tongue
"Lucky fellow," he said. "How I wish I was. But I've got to get
back again after my week. You'll spend the mornings in the
galleries, and the afternoons and evenings at the opera. O Lord,
Munich!"
He came across from the other side of the carriage and sat next
Michael, putting his feet up on the seat opposite.
"Talk of Munich," he said. "I was born in Munich, and I happen to
MICHAEL
43
know that it's the heavenly Jerusalem, neither more nor less."
"Well, the heavenly Jerusalem is practically next door to
Baireuth," said Michael.
"I know; but it can't be managed. However, there's a week of
unalloyed bliss between me now and the desolation of London in
August. What is so maddening is to think of all the people who
could go to Munich and don't."
Michael held debate within himself. He felt that he ought to tell
his new acquaintance that he knew who he was, that, however trivial
their conversation might be, it somehow resembled eavesdropping to
talk to a chance fellow-passenger as if he were a complete
stranger. But it required again a certain effort to make the
announcement.
"I think I had better tell you," he said at length, "that I know
you, that I've listened to you at least, at your sister's recital a
few days ago."
Falbe turned to him with the friendliest pleasure.
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"Ah! were you there?" he asked. "I hope you listened to her, then,
not to me. She sang well, didn't she?"
"But divinely. At the same time I did listen to you, especially in
the French songs. There was less song, you know."
Falbe laughed.
"And more accompaniment!" he said. "Perhaps you play?"
Michael was seized with a fit of shyness at the idea of talking to
Falbe about himself.
"Oh, I just strum," he said.
Throughout the journey their acquaintanceship ripened; and
casually, in dropped remarks, the two began to learn something
about each other. Falbe's command of English, as well as his
sister's, which was so complete that it was impossible to believe
that a foreigner was speaking, was explained, for it came out that
his mother was English, and that from infancy they had spoken
German and English indiscriminately. His father, who had died some
dozen years before, had been a singer of some note in his native
land, but was distinguished more for his teaching than his
practice, and it was he who had taught his daughter. Hermann Falbe
himself had always intended to be a pianist, but the poverty in
which they were left at his father's death had obliged him to give
lessons rather than devote himself to his own career; but now at
the age of thirty he found himself within sight of the competence
that would allow him to cut down his pupils, and begin to be a
pupil again himself.
MICHAEL
44
His sister, moreover, for whom he had slaved for years in order
that she might continue her own singing education unchecked, was
now more than able, especially after these last three months in
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London, where she had suddenly leaped into eminence, to support
herself and contributed to the expenses of their common home. But
there was still, so Michael gathered, no great superabundance of
money, and he guessed that Falbe's inability to go to Munich was
due to the question of expense.
All this came out by inference and allusion rather than by direct
information, while Michael, naturally reticent and feeling that his
own uneventful affairs could have no interest for anybody, was less
communicative. And, indeed, while shunning the appearance of
inquisitiveness, he was far too eager to get hold of his new
acquaintance to think of volunteering much himself. Here to him
was this citizen of the new country who all his life had lived in
the palace of art, and that in no dilettante fashion, but with set
aim and serious purpose. And Falbe abounded in such topics; he
knew the singers and the musicians of the world, and, which was
much more than that, he was himself of them; humble, no doubt, in
circumstances and achievement as yet, but clearly to Michael of the
blood royal of artistry. That was the essential thing about him as
regards his relations with his fellow-traveller, though, when next
morning the spires of Cologne and the swift river of his Fatherland
came into sight, he burst out into a sort of rhapsody of patriotism
that mockingly covered a great sincerity.
"Ah! beloved land!" he cried. "Soil of heaven and of divine
harmony! Hail to thee! Hail to thee! Rhine, Rhine deep and true
and steadfast. . . ." And he waved his hat and sang the greeting
of Brunnhilde. Then he turned laughingly to Michael.
"I am sufficiently English to know how ridiculous that must seem to
you," he said, "for I love England also, and the passengers on the
boat would merely think me mad if I apostrophised the cliffs of
Dover and the mud of the English roads. But here I am a German
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again, and I would willingly kiss the soil. You English--we
English, I may say, for I am as much English as German--I believe
have got the same feeling somewhere in our hearts, but we lock it
up and hide it away. Pray God I shall never have to choose to
which nation I belong, though for that matter there in no choice in
it at all, for I am certainly a German subject. Guten Tag, Koln;
let us instantly have our coffee. There is no coffee like German
coffee, though the French coffee is undeniably pleasanter to the
mere superficial palate. But it doesn't touch the heart, as
everything German touches my heart when I come back to the
Fatherland."
He chattered on in tremendous high spirits.
"And to think that to-night we shall sleep in true German beds," he
said. "I allow that the duvet is not so convenient as blankets,
and that there is a watershed always up the middle of your bed, so
that during the night your person descends to one side while the
duvet rolls down the other; but it is German, which makes up for
any trifling inconvenience. Baireuth, too; perhaps it will strike
MICHAEL
45
you as a dull and stinking little town, and so I dare say it is.
But after lunch we shall go up the hillside to where the theatre
stands, at the edge of the pine-woods, and from the porch the
trumpets will give out the motif of the Grail, and we shall pass
out of the heat into the cool darkness of the theatre. Aren't you
thrilled, Comber? Doesn't a holy awe pervade you! Are you worthy,
do you think?"
All this youthful, unrestrained enthusiasm was a revelation to
Michael. Intentionally absurd as Falbe's rhapsody on the
Fatherland had been, Michael knew that it sprang from a solid
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sincerity which was not ashamed of expressing itself. Living, as
he had always done, in the rather formal and reticent atmosphere of
his class and environment, he would have thought this fervour of
patriotism in an English mouth ridiculous, or, if persevered in,
merely bad form. Yet when Falbe hailed the Rhine and the spires of
Cologne, it was clear that there was no bad form about it at all.
He felt like that; and, indeed, as Michael was beginning to
perceive, he felt with a similar intensity on all subjects about
which he felt at all. There was something of the same vivid
quality about Aunt Barbara, but Aunt Barbara's vividness was
chiefly devoted to the hunt of the absurdities of her friends, and
it was always the concretely ridiculous that she pursued. But this
handsome, vital young man, with his eagerness and his welcome for
the world, who had fallen with so delightful a cordiality into
Michael's company, had already an attraction for him of a sort he
had never felt before.
Dimly, as the days went by, he began to conjecture that he who had
never had a friend was being hailed and halloed to, was being
ordered, if not by precept, at any rate by example, to come out of
the shell of his reserve, and let himself feel and let himself
express. He could see how utterly different was Falbe's general
conception and practice of life from his own; to Michael it had
always been a congregation of strangers--Francis excepted--who
moved about, busy with each other and with affairs that had no
allure for him, and were, though not uncivil, wholly alien to him.
He was willing to grant that this alienation, this absence of
comradeship which he had missed all his life, was of his own
making, in so far as his shyness and sensitiveness were the cause
of it; but in effect he had never yet had a friend, because he had
never yet taken his shutters down, so to speak, or thrown his front
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door open. He had peeped out through chinks, and felt how lonely
he was, but he had not given anyone a chance to get in.
Falbe, on the other hand, lived at his window, ready to hail the
passer-by, even as he had hailed Michael, with cheerful words.
There he lounged in his shirt-sleeves, you might say, with elbows
on the window-sill; and not from politeness, but from good
fellowship, from the fact that he liked people, was at home to
everybody. He liked people; there was the key to it. And Michael,
however much he might be capable of liking people, had up till now
given them no sign of it. It really was not their fault if they
had not guessed it.
Two days passed, on the first of which Parsifal was given, and on
MICHAEL
46
the second Meistersinger. On the third there was no performance,
and the two young men had agreed to meet in the morning and drive
out of the town to a neighbouring village among the hills, and
spend the day there in the woods. Michael had looked forward to
this day with extraordinary pleasure, but there was mingled with it
a sort of agony of apprehension that Falbe would find him a very
boring companion. But the precepts of Aunt Barbara came to his
mind, and he reflected that the certain and sure way of proving a
bore was to be taken up with the idea that he might be. And
anyhow, Falbe had proposed the plan himself.
They lunched in a little restaurant near a forest-enclosed lake,
and since the day was very hot, did no more than stroll up the hill
for a hundred yards, where they would get some hint of breeze, and
disposed themselves at length on the carpet of pine-needles.
Through the thick boughs overhead the sunlight reached them only in
specks and flakes, the wind was but as a distant sea in the
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branches, and Falbe rolled over on to his face, and sniffed at the
aromatic leaves with the gusto with which he enjoyed all that was
to him enjoyable.
"Ah; that's good, that's good!" he said. "How I love smells--
clean, sharp smells like this. But they've got to be wild; you
can't tame a smell and put it on your handkerchief; it takes the
life out of it. Do you like smells, Comber?"
"I--I really never thought about it," said Michael.
"Think now, then, and tell me," said Falbe. "If you consider, you
know such a lot about me, and, as a matter of fact, I know nothing
whatever about you. I know you like music--I know you like blue
trout, because you ate so many of them at lunch to-day. But what
else do I know about you ? I don't even know what you thought of
Parsifal. No, perhaps I'm wrong there, because the fact that
you've never mentioned it probably shows that you couldn't. The
symptom of not understanding anything about Parsifal is to talk
about it, and say what a tremendous impression it has made on you."
"Ah! you've guessed right there," said Michael. "I couldn't talk
about it; there's nothing to say about it, except that it is
Parsifal."
"That's true. It becomes part of you, and you can't talk of it any
more than you can talk about your elbows and your knees. It's one
of the things that makes you. . . ."
He turned over on to his back, and laid his hands palm uppermost
over his eyes.
"That's part of the glory of it all," he said; "that art and its
emotions become part of you like the food you eat and the wine you
drink. Art is always making us; it enters into our character and
destiny. As long as you go on growing you assimilate, and thank
God one's mind or soul, or whatever you like to call it, goes on
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growing for a long time. I suppose the moment comes to most people
when they cease to grow, when they become fixed and hard; and that
MICHAEL
47
is what we mean by being old. But till then you weave your
destiny, or, rather, people and beauty weave it for you, as you'll
see the Norns weaving, and yet you never know what you are making.
You make what you are, and you never are because you are always
becoming. You must excuse me; but Germans are always
metaphysicians, and they can't help it."
"Go on; be German," said Michael.
"Lieber Gott! As if I could be anything else," said Falbe,
laughing. "We are the only nation which makes a science of
experimentalism; we try everything, just as a puppy tries
everything. It tries mutton bones, and match-boxes, and soap and
boots; it tries to find out what its tail is for, and bites it till
it hurts, on which it draws the conclusion that it is not meant to
eat. Like all metaphysicians, too, and dealers in the abstract, we
are intensely practical. Our passion for experimentalism is
dictated by the firm object of using the knowledge we acquire. We
are tremendously thorough; we waste nothing, not even time, whereas
the English have an absolute genius for wasting time. Look at all
your games, your sports, your athletics--I am being quite German
now, and forgetting my mother, bless her!--they are merely devices
for getting rid of the hours, and so not having to think. You hate
thought as a nation, and we live for it. Music is thought; all art
is thought; commercial prosperity is thought; soldiering is
thought."
"And we are a nation of idiots?" asked Michael.
"No; I didn't say that. I should say you are a nation of
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sensualists. You value sensation above everything; you pursue the
enjoyable. You are a nation of children who are always having a
perpetual holiday. You go straying all over the world for fun, and
annex it generally, so that you can have tiger-shooting in India,
and lots of gold to pay for your tiger-shooting in Africa, and fur
from Canada for your coats. But it's all a game; not one man in a
thousand in England has any idea of Empire."
"Oh, I think you are wrong there," said Michael. "You believe that
only because we don't talk about it. It's--it's like what we
agreed about Parsifal. We don't talk about it because it is so
much part of us."
Falbe sat up.
"I deny it; I deny it flatly," he said. "I know where I get my
power of foolish, unthinking enjoyment from, and it's from my
English blood. I rejoice in my English blood, because you are the
happiest people on the face of the earth. But you are happy
because you don't think, whereas the joy of being German is that
you do think. England is lying in the shade, like us, with a
cigarette and a drink--I wish I had one--and a golf ball or the
world with which she has been playing her game. But Germany is
sitting up all night thinking, and every morning she gives an order
or two."
MICHAEL
48
Michael supplied the cigarette.
"Do you mean she is thinking about England's golf ball?" asked
Michael.
"Why, of course she is! What else is there to think about?"
"Oh, it's impossible that there should be a European war," said
Michael, "for that is what it will mean!"
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"And why is a European war impossible?" demanded Falbe, lighting
his cigarette.
"It's simply unthinkable!"
"Because you don't think," he interrupted. "I can tell you that
the thought of war is never absent for a single day from the
average German mind. We are all soldiers, you see. We start with
that. You start by being golfers and cricketers. But 'der Tag' is
never quite absent from the German mind. I don't say that all you
golfers and cricketers wouldn't make good soldiers, but you've got
to be made. You can't be a golfer one day and a soldier the next."
Michael laughed.
"As for that," he said, "I made an uncommonly bad soldier. But I
am an even worse golfer. As for cricket--"
Falbe again interrupted.
"Ah, then at last I know two things about you," he said. "You were
a soldier and you can't play golf. I have never known so little
about anybody after three--four days. However, what is our
proverb? 'Live and learn.' But it takes longer to learn than to
live. Eh, what nonsense I talk."
He spoke with a sudden irritation, and the laugh at the end of his
speech was not one of amusement, but rather of mockery. To Michael
this mood was quite inexplicable, but, characteristically, he
looked about in himself for the possible explanation of it.
"But what's the matter?" he asked. "Have I annoyed you somehow?
I'm awfully sorry."
Falbe did not reply for a moment.
"No, you've not annoyed me," he said. "I've annoyed myself. But
that's the worst of living on one's nerves, which is the penalty of
Baireuth. There is no charge, so to speak, except for your ticket,
but a collection is made, as happens at meetings, and you pay with
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your nerves. You must cancel my annoyance, please. If I showed it
I did not mean to."
Michael pondered over this.
"But I can't leave it like that," he said at length. "Was it about
MICHAEL
49
the possibility of war, which I said was unthinkable?"
Falbe laughed and turned on his elbow towards Michael.
"No, my dear chap," he said. "You may believe it to be
unthinkable, and I may believe it to be inevitable; but what does
it matter what either of us believes? Che sara sara. It was quite
another thing that caused me to annoy myself. It does not matter."
Michael lay back on the soft slope.
"Yet I insist on knowing," he said. "That is, I mean, if it is not
private."
Falbe lay quietly with his long fingers in the sediment of pine-
needles.
"Well, then, as it is not private, and as you insist," he said, "I
will certainly tell you. Does it not strike you that you are
behaving like an absolute stranger to me? We have talked of me and
my home and my plans all the time since we met at Victoria Station,
and you have kept complete silence about yourself. I know nothing
of you, not who you are, or what you are, or what your flag is.
You fly no flag, you proclaim no identity. You may be a crossing-
sweeper, or a grocer, or a marquis for all I know. Of course, that
matters very little; but what does matter is that never for a
moment have you shown me not what you happen to be, but what you
are. I've got the impression that you are something, that there's
a real 'you' in your inside. But you don't let me see it. You
send a polite servant to the door when I knock. Probably this
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sounds very weird and un-English to you. But to my mind it is much
more weird to behave as you are behaving. Come out, can't you.
Let's look at you."
It was exactly that--that brusque, unsentimental appeal--that
Michael needed. He saw himself at that moment, as Falbe saw him, a
shelled and muffled figure, intangible and withdrawn, but
observing, as it were, through eye-holes, and giving nothing in
exchange for what he saw.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It's quite true what you tell me. I'm like
that. But it really has never struck me that anybody cared to
know."
Falbe ceased digging his excavation in the pine-needles and looked
up on Michael.
"Good Lord, man!" he said; "people care if you'll only allow them
to. The indifference of other people is a false term for the
secretiveness of oneself. How can they care, unless you let them
know what there is to care for?"
"But I'm completely uninteresting," said Michael.
"Yes; I'll judge of that," said Falbe.
MICHAEL
50
Slowly, and with diffident pauses, Michael began to speak of
himself, feeling at first as if he was undressing in public. But
as he went on he became conscious of the welcome that his story
received, though that welcome only expressed itself in perfectly
unemotional monosyllables. He might be undressing, but he was
undressing in front of a fire. He knew that he uncovered himself
to no icy blast or contemptuous rain, as he had felt when, so few
days before, he had spoken of himself and what he was to his
father. There was here the common land of music to build upon,
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whereas to Lord Ashbridge that same soil had been, so to speak, the
territory of the enemy. And even more than that, there was the
instinct, the certain conviction that he was telling his tale to
sympathetic ears, to which the mere fact that he was speaking of
himself presupposed a friendly hearing. Falbe, he felt, wanted to
know about him, regardless of the nature of his confessions. Had
he said that he was an undetected kleptomaniac, Falbe would have
liked to know, have been pleased at any tidings, provided only they
were authentic. This seemed to reveal itself to him even as he
spoke; it had been there waiting for him to claim it, lying there
as in a poste restante, only ready for its owner.
At the end Falbe gave a long sigh.
"And why the devil didn't you give me any hint of it before?" he
asked.
"I didn't think it mattered," said Michael.
"Well, then, you are amazingly wrong. Good Lord, it's about the
most interesting thing I've ever heard. I didn't know anybody
could escape from that awful sort of prison-house in which our--I'm
English now--in which our upper class immures itself. Yet you've
done it. I take it that the thing is done now?"
"I'm not going back into the prison-house again, if you mean that,"
said Michael.
"And will your father cut you off?" asked he.
"Oh, I haven't the least idea," said Michael.
"Aren't you going to inquire?"
Michael hesitated.
"No, I'm sure I'm not," he said. "I can't do that. It's his
business. I couldn't ask about what he had done, or meant to do.
It's a sort of pride, I suppose. He will do as he thinks proper,
and when he has thought, perhaps he will tell me what he intends."
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"But, then, how will you live?" asked Falbe.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you that. I've got some money, quite a lot,
I mean, from my grandmother. In some ways I rather wish I hadn't.
It would have been a proof of sincerity to have become poor. That
MICHAEL
51
wouldn't have made the smallest difference to my resolution."
Falbe laughed.
"And so you are rich, and yet go second-class," he said. "If I
were rich I would make myself exceedingly comfortable. I like
things that are good to eat and soft to touch. But I'm bound to
say that I get on quite excellently without them. Being poor does
not make the smallest difference to one's happiness, but only to
the number of one's pleasures."
Michael paused a moment, and then found courage to say what for the
last two days he had been longing to give utterance to.
"I know; but pleasures are very nice things," he said. "And
doesn't it seem obvious now that you are coming to Munich with me?
It's a purely selfish suggestion on my part. After being with you
it will be very stupid to be alone there. But it would be so
delightful if you would come."
Falbe looked at him a moment without speaking, but Michael saw the
light in his eyes.
"And what if I have my pride too?" he said. "Then I shall
apologise for having made the proposal," said Michael simply.
For just a second more Falbe hesitated. Then he held out his hand.
"I thank you most awfully," he said. "I accept with the greatest
pleasure."
Michael drew a long breath of relief.
"I am glad," he said. "So that's settled. It's really nice of
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you."
The heat of the day was passing off, and over the sun-bleached
plain the coolness of evening was beginning to steal. Overhead the
wind stirred more resonantly in the pines, and in the bushes birds
called to each other. Presently after, they rose from where they
had lain all the afternoon and strolled along the needled slope to
where, through a vista in the trees, they looked down on the lake
and the hamlet that clustered near it. Down the road that wound
through the trees towards it passed labourers going homeward from
their work, with cheerful guttural cries to each other and a herd
of cows sauntered by with bells melodiously chiming, taking
leisurely mouthfuls from the herbage of the wayside. In the
village, lying low in the clear dusk, scattered lights began to
appear, the smoke of evening fires to ascend, and the aromatic
odour of the burning wood strayed towards them up the wind.
Falbe, whose hand lay in the crook of Michael's arm, pointed
downwards to the village that lay there sequestered and rural.
"That's Germany," he said; "it's that which lies at the back of
every German heart. There lie the springs of the Rhine. It's out
MICHAEL
52
of that originally that there came all that Germany stands for, its
music, its poetry, its philosophy, its kultur. All flowed from
these quiet uplands. It was here that the nation began to think
and to dream. To dreamt! It's out of dreams that all has sprung."
He laughed.
"And then next week when we go to Munich, you will find me saying
that this, this Athens of a town, with its museums and its
galleries and its music, is Germany. I shall be right, too. Out
of much dreaming comes the need to make. It is when the artist's
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head and heart are full of his dreams that his hands itch for the
palette or the piano. Nuremberg! Cannot we stop a few hours, at
least, in Nuremberg, and see the meadow by the Pegnitz where the
Meistersingers held their contest of song and the wooden, gabled
house where Albrecht Durer lived? That will teach you Germany,
too. The bud of their dream was opening then; and what flower,
even in the magnificence of its full-blowing, is so lovely?
Albrecht Durer, with his deep, patient eyes, and his patient hands
with their unerring stroke; or Bach, with the fugue flowing from
his brain through his quick fingers, making stars--stars fixed
forever in the heaven of harmony! Don't tell me that there is
anything in the world more wonderful! We may have invented a few
more instruments, we may have experimented with a few more
combinations of notes, but in the B minor Mass, or in the music of
the Passion, all is said. And all that came from the woods and the
country and the quiet life in little towns, when the artist did his
work because he loved it, and cared not one jot about what anybody
else thought about it. We are a nation of thinkers and dreamers."
Michael hesitated a moment.
"But you said not long ago that you were also the most practical
nation," he said. "You are a nation of soldiers, also."
"And who would not willingly give himself for such a Fatherland?"
said Falbe. "If need be, we will lay our lives down for that, and
die more willingly than we have lived. God grant that the need
comes not. But should it come we are ready. We are bound to be
ready; it would be a crime not to be ready--a crime against the
Fatherland. We love peace, but the peace-lovers are just those who
in war are most terrible. For who are the backbone of war when war
comes? The women of the country, my friend, not the ministers, not
the generals and the admirals. I don't say they make war, but when
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war is made they are the spirit of it, because, more than men, they
love their homes. There is not a woman in Germany who will not
send forth brother and husband and father and child, should the day
come. But it will not come from our seeking."
He turned to Michael, his face illuminated by the red glow of the
sinking sun.
"Germany will rise as one man if she's told to," he said, "for that
is what her unity and her discipline mean. She is patient and
peaceful, but she is obedient."
MICHAEL
53
He pointed northwards.
"It is from there, from Prussia, from Berlin," he said, "that the
word will come, if they who rule and govern us, and in whose hands
are all organisation and equipment, tell us that our national
existence compels us to fight. They rule. The Prussians rule;
there is no doubt of that. From Germany have come the arts, the
sciences, the philosophies of the world, and not from there. But
they guard our national life. It is they who watch by the Rhine
for us, patient and awake. Should they beckon us one night, on
some peaceful August night like this, when all seems so tranquil,
so secure, we shall go. The silent beckoning finger will be obeyed
from one end of the land to the other, from Poland on the east to
France on the west."
He turned away quickly.
"It does not bear thinking of," he said; "and yet there are many,
oh, so many, who night and day concern themselves with nothing
else. Let us be English again, and not think of anything serious
or unpleasant. Already, as you know, I am half English; there is
something to build upon. Ah, and this is the sentimental hour,
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just when the sun begins to touch the horizon line of the stale,
weary old earth and turns it into rosy gold and heals its troubles
and its weariness. Schon, Schon!"
He stood for a moment bareheaded to the breeze, and made a great
florid salutation to the sun, now only half-disk above the horizon.
"There! I have said my evensong," he remarked, "like a good
German, who always and always is ridiculous to the whole world,
except those who are German also. Oh, I can see how we look to the
rest of the world so well. Beer mug in one hand, and mouth full of
sausage and song, and with the other hand, perhaps, fingering a
revolver. How unreal it must seem to you, how affected, and yet
how, in truth, you miss it all. Scratch a Russian, they say, and
you find a Tartar; but scratch a German and you find two things--a
sentimentalist and a soldier. Lieber Gott! No, I will say, Good
God! I am English again, and if you scratch me you will find a
golf ball."
He took Michael's arm again.
"Well, we've spent one day together," he said, "and now we know
something of who we are. I put this day in the bank; it's mine or
yours or both of ours. I won't tell you how I've enjoyed it, or
you will say that I have enjoyed it because I have talked almost
all the time. But since it's the sentimental hour I will tell you
that you mistake. I have enjoyed it because I believe I have found
a friend."
CHAPTER V
Hermann Falbe had just gone back to his lodgings at the end of the
MICHAEL
54
Richard Wagner Strasse late on the night of their last day at
Baireuth, and Michael, who had leaned out of his window to remind
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him of the hour of their train's departure the next morning, turned
back into the room to begin his packing. That was not an affair
that would take much time, but since, on this sweltering August
night, it would certainly be a process that involved the production
of much heat, he made ready for bed first, and went about his
preparations in pyjamas. The work of dropping things into a bag
was soon over, and finding it impossible to entertain the idea of
sleep, he drew one of the stiff, plush-covered arm-chairs to the
window and slipped the rein from his thoughts, letting them gallop
where they pleased.
In all his life he had never experienced so much sheer emotion as
the last week had held for him. He had enjoyed his first taste of
liberty; he had stripped himself naked to music; he had found a
friend. Any one of these would have been sufficient to saturate
him, and they had all, in the decrees of Fate, come together. His
life hitherto had been like some dry sponge, dusty and crackling;
now it was plunged in the waters of three seas, all incomparably
sweet.
He had gained his liberty, and in that process he had forgotten
about himself, the self which up till now had been so intolerable a
burden. At school, and even before, when first the age of self-
consciousness dawned upon him, he had seen himself as he believed
others saw him--a queer, awkward, ill-made boy, slow at his work,
shy with his fellows, incapable at games. Walled up in this
fortress of himself, this gloomy and forbidding fastness, he had
altogether failed to find the means of access to others, both to
the normal English boys among whom his path lay, and also to his
teachers, who, not unnaturally, found him sullen and unresponsive.
There was no key among the rather limited bunches at their command
which unlocked him, nor at home had anything been found which could
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fit his wards. It had been the business of school to turn out boys
of certain received types. There was the clever boy, the athletic
boy, the merely pleasant boy; these and the combinations arrived at
from these types were the output. There was no use for others.
Then had succeeded those three nightmare years in the Guards,
where, with his more mature power of observation, he had become
more actively conscious of his inability to take his place on any
of the recognised platforms. And all the time, like an owl on his
solitary perch, he had gazed out lonelily, while the other birds of
day, too polite to mock him, had merely passed him by. One such,
it is true--his cousin--had sat by him, and the poor owl's heart
had gone out to him. But even Francis, so he saw now, had not
understood. He had but accepted the fact of him without
repugnance, had been fond of him as a queer sort of kind elder
cousin.
Then there was Aunt Barbara. Aunt Barbara, Michael allowed, had
understood a good deal; she had pointed out with her unerringly
humourous finger the obstacles he had made for himself.
But could Aunt Barbara understand the rapture of living which this
MICHAEL
55
one week of liberty had given him? That Michael doubted. She had
only pointed out the disabilities he made for himself. She did not
know what he was capable of in the way of happiness. But he
thought, though without self-consciousness, how delightful it would
be to show himself, the new, unshelled self, to Aunt Barbara again.
A laughing couple went tapping down the street below his window,
boy and girl, with arms and waists interlaced. They were laughing
at nothing at all, except that they were boy and girl together and
it was all glorious fun. But the sight of them gave Michael a
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sudden spasm of envy. With all this enlightenment that had come to
him during this last week, there had come no gleam of what that
simplest and commonest aspect of human nature meant. He had never
felt towards a girl what that round-faced German boy felt. He was
not sure, but he thought he disliked girls; they meant nothing to
him, anyhow, and the mere thought of his arm round a girl's waist
only suggested a very embarrassing attitude. He had nothing to say
to them, and the knowledge of his inability filled him with an
uncomfortable sense of his want of normality, just as did the
consciousness of his long arms and stumpy legs.
There was a night he remembered when Francis had insisted that he
should go with him to a discreet little supper party after an
evening at the music-hall. There were just four of them--he,
Francis, and two companions--and he played the role of sour
gooseberry to his cousin, who, with the utmost gaiety, had proved
himself completely equal to the inauspicious occasion, and had
drank indiscriminately out of both the girls' glasses, and lit
cigarettes for them; and, after seeing them both home, had looked
in on Michael, and gone into fits of laughter at his general
incompatibility.
The steps and conversation passed round the corner, and Michael,
stretching his bare toes on to the cool balcony, resumed his
researches--those joyful, unegoistic researches into himself. His
liberty was bound up with his music; the first gave the key to the
second. Often as he had rested, so to speak, in oases of music in
London, they were but a pause from the desert of his uncongenial
life into the desert again. But now the desert was vanished, and
the oasis stretched illimitable to the horizon in front of him.
That was where, for the future, his life was to be passed, not
idly, sitting under trees, but in the eager pursuit of its
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unnumbered paths. It was that aspect of it which, as he knew so
well, his father, for instance, would never be able to understand.
To Lord Ashbridge's mind, music was vaguely connected with white
waistcoats and opera glasses and large pink carnations; he was
congenitally incapable of viewing it in any other light than a
diversion, something that took place between nine and eleven
o'clock in the evening, and in smaller quantities at church on
Sunday morning. He would undoubtedly have said that Handel's
Messiah was the noblest example of music in the world, because of
its subject; music did not exist for him as a separate, definite
and infinite factor of life; and since it did not so exist for
himself, he could not imagine it existing for anybody else. That
Michael correctly knew to be his father's general demeanour towards
life; he wanted everybody in their respective spheres to be like
MICHAEL
56
what he was in his. They must take their part, as he undoubtedly
did, in the Creation-scheme when the British aristocracy came into
being.
A fresh factor had come into Michael's conception of music during
these last seven days. He had become aware that Germany was music.
He had naturally known before that the vast proportion of music
came from Germany, that almost all of that which meant "music" to
him was of German origin; but that was a very different affair from
the conviction now borne in on his mind that there was not only no
music apart from Germany, but that there was no Germany apart from
music.
But every moment he spent in this wayside puddle of a town (for so
Baireuth seemed to an unbiased view), he became more and more aware
that music beat in the German blood even as sport beat in the blood
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of his own people. During this festival week Baireuth existed only
because of that; at other times Baireuth was probably as non-
existent as any dull and minor town in the English Midlands. But,
owing to the fact of music being for these weeks resident in
Baireuth, the sordid little townlet became the capital of the huge,
patient Empire. It existed just now simply for that reason; to-
night, with the curtain of the last act of Parsifal, it had ceased
to exist again. It was not that a patriotic desire to honour one
of the national heroes in the home where he had been established by
the mad genius of a Bavarian king that moved them; it was because
for the moment that Baireuth to Germans meant Germany. From
Berlin, from Dresden, from Frankfurt, from Luxemburg, from a
hundred towns those who were most typically German, whether high or
low, rich or poor, made their joyous pilgrimage. Joy and
solemnity, exultation and the yearning that could never be
satisfied drew them here. And even as music was in Michael's
heart, so Germany was there also. They were the people who
understood; they did not go to the opera as a be-diamonded
interlude between a dinner and a dance; they came to this dreadful
little town, the discomforts of which, the utter provinciality of
which was transformed into the air of the heavenly Jerusalem, as
Hermann Falbe had said, because their souls were fed here with wine
and manna. He would find the same thing at Munich, so Falbe had
told him, the next week.
The loves and the tragedies of the great titanic forces that saw
the making of the world; the dreams and the deeds of the masters of
Nuremberg; above all, sacrifice and enlightenment and redemption of
the soul; how, except by music, could these be made manifest? It
was the first and only and final alchemy that could by its magic
transformation give an answer to the tremendous riddles of
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consciousness; that could lift you, though tearing and making
mincemeat of you, to the serenity of the Pisgah-top, whence was
seen the promised land. It, in itself, was reality; and the door-
keeper who admitted you into that enchanted realm was the spirit of
Germany. Not France, with its little, morbid shiverings, and its
meat-market called love; not Italy, with its melodious declamations
and tawdry tunes; not Russia even, with the wind of its
impenetrable winters, its sense of joys snatched from its eternal
frosts gave admittance there; but Germany, "deep, patient Germany,"
MICHAEL
57
that sprang from upland hamlets, and flowed down with ever-
broadening stream into the illimitable ocean.
Here, then, were two of the initiations that had come, with the
swiftness of the spate in Alpine valleys at the melting of the
snow, upon Michael; his own liberty, namely, and this new sense of
music. He had groped, he felt now, like a blind man in that
direction, guided only by his instinct, and on a sudden the scales
had fallen from his eyes, and he knew that his instinct had guided
him right. But not less epoch-making had been the dawn of
friendship. Throughout the week his intimacy with Hermann Falbe
had developed, shooting up like an aloe flower, and rising into
sunlight above the mists of his own self-occupied shyness, which
had so darkly beset him all life long. He had given the best that
he knew of himself to his cousin, but all the time there had never
quite been absent from his mind his sense of inferiority, a sort of
aching wonder why he could not be more like Francis, more careless,
more capable of enjoyment, more of a normal type. But with Falbe
he was able for the first time to forget himself altogether; he had
met a man who did not recall him to himself, but took him clean out
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of that tedious dwelling which he knew so well and, indeed,
disliked so much. He was rid for the first time of his morbid
self-consciousness; his anchor had been taken up from its dragging
in the sand, and he rode free, buoyed on waters and taken by tides.
It did not occur to him to wonder whether Falbe thought him uncouth
and awkward; it did not occur to him to try to be pleasant, a job
over which poor Michael had so often found himself dishearteningly
incapable; he let himself be himself in the consciousness that this
was sufficient.
They had spent the morning together before this second performance
of Parsifal that closed their series, in the woods above the
theatre, and Michael, no longer blurting out his speeches, but
speaking in the quiet, orderly manner in which he thought,
discussed his plans.
"I shall come back to London with you after Munich," he said, "and
settle down to study. I do know a certain amount about harmony
already; I have been mugging it up for the last three years. But I
must do something as well as learn something, and, as I told you,
I'm going to take up the piano seriously."
Falbe was not attending particularly.
"A fine instrument, the piano," he remarked. "There is certainly
something to be done with a piano, if you know how to do it. I can
strum a bit myself. Some keys are harder than others--the black
notes."
"Yes; what of the black notes?" asked Michael.
"Oh! they're black. The rest are white. I beg your pardon!"
Michael laughed.
"When you have finished drivelling," he said, "you might let me
MICHAEL
58
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know."
"I have finished drivelling, Michael. I was thinking about
something else."
"Not really?"
"Really."
"Then it was impolite of you, but you haven't any manners. I was
talking about my career. I want to do something, and these large
hands are really rather nimble. But I must be taught. The
question is whether you will teach me."
Falbe hesitated.
"I can't tell you," he said, "till I have heard you play. It's
like this: I can't teach you to play unless you know how, and I
can't tell if you know how until I have heard you. If you have got
that particular sort of temperament that can put itself into the
notes out of the ends of your fingers, I can teach you, and I will.
But if you haven't, I shall feel bound to advise you to try the
Jew's harp, and see if you can get it out of your teeth. I'm not
mocking you; I fancy you know that. But some people, however
keenly and rightly they feel, cannot bring their feelings out
through their fingers. Others can; it is a special gift. If you
haven't got it, I can't teach you anything, and there is no use in
wasting your time and mine. You can teach yourself to be
frightfully nimble with your fingers, and all the people who don't
know will say: 'How divinely Lord Comber plays! That sweet thing;
is it Brahms or Mendelssohn?' But I can't really help you towards
that; you can do that for yourself. But if you've got the other, I
can and will teach you all that you really know already."
"Go on!" said Michael.
"That's just the devil with the piano," said Falbe. "It's the
easiest instrument of all to make a show on, and it is the rarest
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sort of person who can play on it. That's why, all those years, I
have hated giving lessons. If one has to, as I have had to, one
must take any awful miss with a pigtail, and make a sham pianist of
her. One can always do that. But it would be waste of time for
you and me; you wouldn't want to be made a sham pianist, and simply
I wouldn't make you one."
Michael turned round.
"Good Lord!" he said, "the suspense is worse than I can bear.
Isn't there a piano in your room? Can't we go down there, and have
it over?"
"Yes, if you wish. I can tell at once if you are capable of
playing--at least, whether I think you are capable of playing--
whether I can teach you."
"But I haven't touched a piano for a week," said Michael.
MICHAEL
59
"It doesn't matter whether you've touched a piano for a year."
Michael had not been prevented by the economy that made him travel
second-class from engaging a carriage by the day at Baireuth, since
that clearly was worth while, and they found it waiting for them by
the theatre. There was still time to drive to Falbe's lodging and
get through this crucial ordeal before the opera, and they went
straight there. A very venerable instrument, which Falbe had not
yet opened, stood against the wall, and he struck a few notes on
it.
"Completely out of tune," he said; "but that doesn't matter. Now
then!"
"But what am I to play?" asked Michael.
"Anything you like."
He sat down at the far end of the room, put his long legs up on to
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another chair and waited. Michael sent a despairing glance at that
gay face, suddenly grown grim, and took his seat. He felt a
paralysing conviction that Falbe's judgment, whatever that might
turn out to be, would be right, and the knowledge turned his
fingers stiff. From the few notes that Falbe had struck he guessed
on what sort of instrument his ordeal was to take place, and yet he
knew that Falbe himself would have been able to convey to him the
sense that he could play, though the piano was all out of tune, and
there might be dumb, disconcerting notes in it. There was justice
in Falbe's dictum about the temperament that lay behind the player,
which would assert itself through any faultiness of instrument, and
through, so he suspected, any faultiness of execution.
He struck a chord, and heard it jangle dissonantly.
"Oh, it's not fair," he said.
"Get on!" said Falbe.
In spite of Germany there occurred to Michael a Chopin prelude, at
which he had worked a little during the last two months in London.
The notes he knew perfectly; he had believed also that he had found
a certain conception of it as a whole, so that he could make
something coherent out of it, not merely adding bar to correct bar.
And he began the soft repetition of chord-quavers with which it
opened.
Then after stumbling wretchedly through two lines of it, he
suddenly forgot himself and Falbe, and the squealing unresponsive
notes. He heard them no more, absorbed in the knowledge of what he
meant by them, of the mood which they produced in him. His great,
ungainly hands had all the gentleness and self-control that
strength gives, and the finger-filling chords were as light and as
fine as the settling of some poised bird on a bough. In the last
few lines of the prelude a deep bass note had to be struck at the
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beginning of each bar; this Michael found was completely dumb, but
MICHAEL
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so clear and vivid was the effect of it in his mind that he
scarcely noticed that it returned no answer to his finger. . . .
At the end he sat without moving, his hands dropped on to his
knees.
Falbe got up and, coming over to the piano, struck the bass note
himself.
"Yes, I knew it was dumb," he said, "but you made me think it
wasn't. . . . You got quite a good tone out of it."
He paused a moment, again striking the dumb note, as if to make
sure that it was soundless.
"Yes; I'll teach you," he said. "All the technique you have got,
you know, is wrong from beginning to end, and you mustn't mind
unlearning all that. But you've got the thing that matters."
All this stewed and seethed in Michael's mind as he sat that night
by the window looking out on to the silent and empty street. His
thoughts flowed without check or guide from his will, wandering
wherever their course happened to take them, now lingering, like
the water of a river in some deep, still pool, when he thought of
the friendship that had come into his life, now excitedly plunging
down the foam of swift-flowing rapids in the exhilaration of his
newly-found liberty, now proceeding with steady current at the
thought of the weeks of unremitting industry at a beloved task that
lay in front of him. He could form no definite image out of these
which should represent his ordinary day; it was all lost in a
bright haze through which its shape was but faintly discernible;
but life lay in front of him with promise, a thing to be embraced
and greeted with welcome and eager hands, instead of being a mere
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marsh through which he had to plod with labouring steps, a business
to be gone about without joy and without conviction in its being
worth while.
He wondered for a moment, as he rose to go to bed, what his
feelings would have been if, at the end of his performance on the
sore-throated and voiceless piano, Falbe had said: "I'm sorry, but
I can't do anything with you." As he knew, Falbe intended for the
future only to take a few pupils, and chiefly devote himself to his
own practice with a view to emerging as a concert-giver the next
winter; and as Michael had sat down, he remembered telling himself
that there was really not the slightest chance of his friend
accepting him as a pupil. He did not intend that this rejection
should make the smallest difference to his aim, but he knew that he
would start his work under the tremendous handicap of Falbe not
believing that he had it in him to play, and under the
disappointment of not enjoying the added intimacy which work with
and for Falbe would give him. Then he had engaged in this tussle
with refractory notes till he quite lost himself in what he was
playing, and thought no more either of Falbe or the piano, but only
of what the melody meant to him. But at the end, when he came to
himself again, and sat with dropped hands waiting for Falbe's
verdict, he remembered how his heart seemed to hang poised until it
MICHAEL
61
came. He had rehearsed again to himself his fixed determination
that he would play and could play, whatever his friend might think
about it; but there was no doubt that he waited with a greater
suspense than he had ever known in his life before for that verdict
to be made known to him.
Next day came their journey to Munich, and the installation in the
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best hotel in Europe. Here Michael was host, and the economy which
he practised when he had only himself to provide for, and which
made him go second-class when travelling, was, as usual, completely
abandoned now that the pleasure of hospitality was his. He engaged
at once the best double suite of rooms that the hotel contained,
two bedrooms with bathrooms, and an admirable sitting-room, looking
spaciously out on to the square, and with brusque decision silenced
Falbe's attempted remonstrance. "Don't interfere with my show,
please," he had said, and proceeded to inquire about a piano to be
sent in for the week. Then he turned to his friend again. "Oh, we
are going to enjoy ourselves," he said, with an irresistible
sincerity.
Tristan und Isolde was given on the third day of their stay there,
and Falbe, reading the morning German paper, found news.
"The Kaiser has arrived," he said. "There's a truce in the army
manoeuvres for a couple of days, and he has come to be present at
Tristan this evening. He's travelled three hundred miles to get
here, and will go back to-morrow. The Reise-Kaiser, you know."
Michael looked up with some slight anxiety.
"Ought I to write my name or anything?" he asked. "He has stayed
several times with my father."
"Has he? But I don't suppose it matters. The visit is a widely-
advertised incognito. That's his way. God be with the All-
highest," he added.
"Well, I shan't" said Michael. "But it would shock my father
dreadfully if he knew. The Kaiser looks on him as the type and
model of the English nobleman."
Michael crunched one of the inimitable breakfast rusks in his
teeth.
"Lord, what a day we had when he was at Ashbridge last year," he
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said. "We began at eight with a review of the Suffolk Yeomanry;
then we had a pheasant shoot from eleven till three; then the
Emperor had out a steam launch and careered up and down the river
till six, asking a thousand questions about the tides and the
currents and the navigable channels. Then he lectured us on the
family portraits till dinner; after dinner there was a concert, at
which he conducted the 'Song to Aegir,' and then there was a torch-
light fandango by the tenants on the lawn. He was on his holiday,
you must remember."
"I heard the 'Song to Aegir' once," remarked Falbe, with a
MICHAEL
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perfectly level intonation.
"I was--er--luckier," said Michael politely, "because on that
occasion I heard it twice. It was encored."
"And what did it sound like the second time?" asked Falbe.
"Much as before," said Michael.
The advent of the Emperor had put the whole town in a ferment.
Though the visit was quite incognito, an enormous military staff
which had been poured into the town might have led the thoughtful
to suspect the Kaiser's presence, even if it had not been announced
in the largest type in the papers, and marchings and counter-
marchings of troops and sudden bursts of national airs proclaimed
the august presence. He held an informal review of certain
Bavarian troops not out for manoeuvres in the morning, visited the
sculpture gallery and pinacothek in the afternoon, and when Hermann
and Michael went up to the theatre they found rows of soldiers
drawn up, and inside unusual decorations over a section of stalls
which had been removed and was converted into an enormous box.
This was in the centre of the first tier, nearly at right angles to
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where they sat, in the front row of the same tier; and when, with
military punctuality, the procession of uniforms, headed by the
Emperor, filed in, the whole of the crowded house stood up and
broke into a roar of recognition and loyalty.
For a minute, or perhaps more, the Emperor stood facing the house
with his hand raised in salute, a figure the uprightness of which
made him look tall. His brilliant uniform was ablaze with
decorations; he seemed every inch a soldier and a leader of men.
For that minute he stood looking neither to the right nor left,
stern and almost frowning, with no shadow of a smile playing on the
tightly-drawn lips, above which his moustache was brushed upwards
in two stiff protuberances towards his eyes. He was there just
then not to see, but to be seen, his incognito was momentarily in
abeyance, and he stood forth the supreme head of his people, the
All-highest War Lord, who had come that day from the field, to
which he would return across half Germany tomorrow. It was an
impressive and dignified moment, and Michael heard Falbe say to
himself: "Kaiserlich! Kaiserlich!"
Then it was over. The Emperor sat down, beckoned to two of his
officers, who had stood in a group far at the back of the box, to
join him, and with one on each side he looked about the house and
chatted to them. He had taken out his opera-glass, which he
adjusted, using his right hand only, and looked this way and that,
as if, incognito again, he was looking for friends in the house.
Once Michael thought that he looked rather long and fixedly in his
direction, and then, putting down his glass, he said something to
one of the officers, this time clearly pointing towards Michael.
Then he gave some signal, just raising his hand towards the
orchestra, and immediately the lights were put down, the whole
house plunged in darkness, except where the lamps in the sunk
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orchestra faintly illuminated the base of the curtain, and the
first longing, unsatisfied notes of the prelude began.
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63
The next hour passed for Michael in one unbroken mood of
absorption. The supreme moment of knowing the music intimately and
of never having seen the opera before was his, and all that he had
dreamed of or imagined as to the possibilities of music was flooded
and drowned in the thing itself. You could not say that it was
more gigantic than The Ring, more human than the Meistersingers,
more emotional than Parsifal, but it was utterly and wholly
different to anything else he had ever seen or conjectured. Falbe,
he himself, the thronged and silent theatre, the Emperor, Munich,
Germany, were all blotted out of his consciousness. He just
watched, as if discarnate, the unrolling of the decrees of Fate
which were to bring so simple and overpowering a tragedy on the two
who drained the love-potion together. And at the end he fell back
in his seat, feeling thrilled and tired, exhilarated and exhausted.
"Oh, Hermann," he said, "what years I've wasted!"
Falbe laughed.
"You've wasted more than you know yet," he said. "Hallo!"
A very resplendent officer had come clanking down the gangway next
them. He put his heels together and bowed.
"Lord Comber, I think?" he said in excellent English.
Michael roused himself.
"Yes?" he said.
"His Imperial Majesty has done me the honour to desire you to come
and speak to him," he said.
"Now?" said Michael.
"If you will be so good," and he stood aside for Michael to pass up
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the stairs in front of him.
In the wide corridor behind he joined him again.
"Allow me to introduce myself as Count von Bergmann," he said, "and
one of His Majesty's aides-de-camp. The Kaiser always speaks with
great pleasure of the visits he has paid to your father, and he saw
you immediately he came into the theatre. If you will permit me, I
would advise you to bow, but not very low, respecting His Majesty's
incognito, to seat yourself as soon as he desires it, and to remain
till he gives you some speech of dismissal. Forgive me for going
in front of you here. I have to introduce you to His Majesty's
presence."
Michael followed him down the steps to the front of the box.
"Lord Comber, All-highest," he said, and instantly stood back.
The Emperor rose and held out his hand, and Michael, bowing over it
MICHAEL
64
as he took it, felt himself seized in the famous grip of steel, of
which its owner as well as its recipient was so conscious.
"I am much pleased to see you, Lord Comber," said he. "I could not
resist the pleasure of a little chat with you about our beloved
England. And your excellent father, how is he?"
He indicated a chair to Michael, who, as advised, instantly took
it, though the Emperor remained a moment longer standing.
"I left him in very good health, Your Majesty," said Michael.
"Ah! I am glad to hear it. I desire you to convey to him my
friendliest greetings, and to your mother also. I well remember my
last visit to his house above the tidal estuary at Ashbridge, and I
hope it may not be very long before I have the opportunity to be in
England again."
He spoke in a voice that seemed rather hoarse and tired, but his
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manner expressed the most courteous cordiality. His face, which
had been as still as a statue's when he showed himself to the
house, was now never in repose for a moment. He kept turning his
head, which he carried very upright, this way and that as he spoke;
now he would catch sight of someone in the audience to whom he
directed his glance, now he would peer over the edge of the low
balustrade, now look at the group of officers who stood apart at
the back of the box.
His whole demeanour suggested a nervous, highly-strung condition;
the restlessness of it was that of a man overstrained, who had lost
the capability of being tranquil. Now he frowned, now he smiled,
but never for a moment was he quiet. Then he launched a perfect
hailstorm of questions at Michael, to the answers to which (there
was scarcely time for more than a monosyllable in reply) he
listened with an eager and a suspicious attention. They were
concerned at first with all sorts of subjects: inquired if Michael
had been at Baireuth, what he was going to do after the Munich
festival was over, if he had English friends here. He inquired
Falbe's name, looked at him for a moment through his glasses, and
desired to know more about him. Then, learning he was a teacher of
the piano in England, and had a sister who sang, he expressed great
satisfaction.
"I like to see my subjects, when there is no need for their
services at home," he said, "learning about other lands, and
bringing also to other lands the culture of the Fatherland, even as
it always gives me pleasure to see the English here, strengthening
by the study of the arts the bonds that bind our two great nations
together. You English must learn to understand us and our great
mission, just as we must learn to understand you."
Then the questions became more specialised, and concerned the state
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of things in England. He laughed over the disturbances created by
the Suffragettes, was eager to hear what politicians thought about
the state of things in Ireland, made specific inquiries about the
Territorial Force, asked about the Navy, the state of the drama in
MICHAEL
65
London, the coal strike which was threatened in Yorkshire. Then
suddenly he put a series of personal questions.
"And you, you are in the Guards, I think?" he said.
"No, sir; I have just resigned my commission," said Michael.
"Why? Why is that? Have many of your officers been resigning?"
"
I am studying music, Your Majesty," said Michael.
"I am glad to see you came to Germany to do it. Berlin? You ought
to spend a couple of months in Berlin. Perhaps you are thinking of
doing so."
He turned round quickly to one of his staff who had approached him.
"Well, what is it?" he said.
Count von Bergmann bowed low.
"The Herr-Director," he said, "humbly craves to know whether it is
Your Majesty's pleasure that the opera shall proceed."
The Kaiser laughed.
"There, Lord Comber," he said, "you see how I am ordered about.
They wish to cut short my conversation with you. Yes, Bergmann, we
will go on. You will remain with me, Lord Comber, for this act."
Immediately after the lights were lowered again, the curtain rose,
and a most distracting hour began for Michael. His neighbour was
never still for a single moment. Now he would shift in his chair,
now with his hand he would beat time on the red velvet balustrade
in front of him, and a stream of whispered appreciation and
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criticism flowed from him.
"They are taking the opening scene a little too slow," he said. "I
shall call the director's attention to that. But that crescendo is
well done; yes, that is most effective. The shawl--observe the
beautiful lines into which the shawl falls as she waves it. That
is wonderful--a very impressive entry. Ah, but they should not
cross the stage yet; it is more effective if they remain longer
there. Brangane sings finely; she warns them that the doom is
near."
He gave a little giggle, which reminded Michael of his father.
"Brangane is playing gooseberry, as you say in England," he said.
"A big gooseberry, is she not? Ah, bravo! bravo! Wunderschon!
Yes, enter King Mark from his hunting. Very fine. Say I was
particularly pleased with the entry of King Mark, Bergmann. A
wonderful act! Wagner never touched greater heights."
At the end the Emperor rose and again held out his hand.
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66
"I am pleased to have seen you, Lord Comber," he said. "Do not
forget my message to your father; and take my advice and come to
Berlin in the winter. We are always pleased to see the English in
Germany."
As Michael left the box he ran into the Herr-Director, who had been
summoned to get a few hints.
He went back to join Falbe in a state of republican irritation,
which the honour that had been done him did not at all assuage.
There was an hour's interval before the third act, and the two
drove back to their hotel to dine there. But Michael found his
friend wholly unsympathetic with his chagrin. To him, it was quite
clear, the disappointment of not having been able to attend very
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closely to the second act of Tristan was negligible compared to the
cause that had occasioned it. It was possible for the ordinary
mortal to see Tristan over and over again, but to converse with the
Kaiser was a thing outside the range of the average man. And again
in this interval, as during the act itself, Michael was bombarded
with questions. What did the Kaiser say? Did he remember
Ashbridge? Did Michael twice receive the iron grip? Did the All-
highest say anything about the manoeuvres? Did he look tired, or
was it only the light above his head that made him appear so
haggard? Even his opinion about the opera was of interest. Did he
express approval?
This was too much for Michael.
"My dear Hermann," he said, "we alluded very cautiously to the
'Song to Aegir' this morning, and delicately remarked that you had
heard it once and I twice. How can you care what his opinion of
this opera is?"
Falbe shook his handsome head, and gesticulated with his fine
hands.
"You don't understand," he said. "You have just been talking to
him himself. I long to hear his every word and intonation. There
is the personality, which to us means so much, in which is summed
up all Germany. It is as if I had spoken to Rule Britannia
herself. Would you not be interested? There is no one in the
world who is to his country what the Kaiser is to us. When you
told me he had stayed at Ashbridge I was thrilled, but I was
ashamed lest you should think me snobbish, which indeed I am not.
But now I am past being ashamed."
He poured out a glass of wine and drank it with a "Hoch!"
"In his hand lies peace and war," he said. "It is as he pleases.
The Emperor and his Chancellor can make Germany do exactly what
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they choose, and if the Chancellor does not agree with the Emperor,
the Emperor can appoint one who does. That is what it comes to;
that is why he is as vast as Germany itself. The Reichstag but
advises where he is concerned. Have you no imagination, Michael?
Europe lies in the hand that shook yours."
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67
Michael laughed.
"I suppose I must have no imagination," he said. "I don't picture
it even now when you point it out."
Falbe pointed an impressive forefinger.
"But for him," he said, "England and Germany would have been at
each other's throats over the business at Agadir. He held the
warhounds in leash--he, their master, who made them."
"Oh, he made them, anyhow," said Michael.
"Naturally. It is his business to be ready for any attack on the
part of those who are jealous at our power. The whole Fatherland
is a sword in his hand, which he sheathes. It would long ago have
leaped from the scabbard but for him."
"Against whom?" asked Michael. "Who is the enemy?"
Falbe hesitated.
"There is no enemy at present," he said, "but the enemy potentially
is any who tries to thwart our peaceful expansion."
Suddenly the whole subject tasted bitter to Michael. He recalled,
instinctively, the Emperor's great curiosity to be informed on
English topics by the ordinary Englishman with whom he had
acquaintance.
"Oh, let's drop it," he said. "I really didn't come to Munich to
talk politics, of which I know nothing whatever."
Falbe nodded.
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"That is what I have said to you before," he remarked. "You are
the most happy-go-lucky of the nations. Did he speak of England?"
"Yes, of his beloved England," said Michael. "He was extremely
cordial about our relations."
"Good. I like that," said Falbe briskly.
"And he recommended me to spend two months in Berlin in the
winter," added Michael, sliding off on to other topics.
Falbe smiled.
"I like that less," he said, "since that will mean you will not be
in London."
"But I didn't commit myself," said Michael, smiling back; "though I
can say 'beloved Germany' with equal sincerity."
Falbe got up.
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68
"I would wish that--that you were Kaiser of England," he said.
"God forbid!" said Michael. "I should not have time to play the
piano."
During the next day or two Michael often found himself chipping at
the bed-rock, so to speak, of this conversation, and Falbe's
revealed attitude towards his country and, in particular, towards
its supreme head. It seemed to him a wonderful and an enviable
thing that anyone could be so thoroughly English as Falbe certainly
was in his ordinary, everyday life, and that yet, at the back of
this there should lie so profound a patriotism towards another
country, and so profound a reverence to its ruler. In his general
outlook on life, his friend appeared to be entirely of one blood
with himself, yet now on two or three occasions a chance spark had
lit up this Teutonic beacon. To Michael this mixture of
nationalities seemed to be a wonderful gift; it implied a widening
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of one's sympathies and outlook, a larger comprehension of life
than was possible to any of undiluted blood.
For himself, like most young Englishmen of his day, he was not
conscious of any tremendous sense of patriotism like this.
Somewhere, deep down in him, he supposed there might be a source, a
well of English waters, which some explosion in his nature might
cause to flood him entirely, but such an idea was purely
hypothetical; he did not, in fact, look forward to such a
bouleversement as being a possible contingency. But with Falbe it
was different; quite a small cause, like the sight of the Rhine at
Cologne, or a Bavarian village at sunset, or the fact of a friend
having talked with the Emperor, was sufficient to make his innate
patriotism find outlet in impassioned speech. He wondered vaguely
whether Falbe's explanation of this--namely, that nationally the
English were prosperous, comfortable and insouciant--was perhaps
sound. It seemed that the notion was not wholly foundationless.
CHAPTER VI
Michael had been practising all the morning of a dark November day,
had eaten a couple of sandwiches standing in front of his fire, and
observed with some secret satisfaction that the fog which had
lifted for an hour had come down on the town again in earnest, and
that it was only reasonable to dismiss the possibility of going
out, and spend the afternoon as he had spent the morning. But he
permitted himself a few minutes' relaxation as he smoked his
cigarette, and sat down by the window, looking out, in Lucretian
mood, on to the very dispiriting conditions that prevailed in the
street.
Though it was still only between one and two in the afternoon, the
densest gloom prevailed, so that it was impossible to see the
outlines even of the houses across the street, and the only
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evidence that he was not in some desert spot lay in the fact of a
few twinkling lights, looking incredibly remote, from the windows
opposite and the gas-lamps below. Traffic seemed to be at a
MICHAEL
69
standstill; the accustomed roar from Piccadilly was dumb, and he
looked out on to a silent and vapour-swathed world. This isolation
from all his fellows and from the chances of being disturbed, it
may be added, gave him a sense of extreme satisfaction. He wanted
his piano, but no intrusive presence. He liked the sensation of
being shut up in his own industrious citadel, secure from
interruption.
During the last two months and a half since his return from Munich
he had experienced greater happiness, had burned with a stronger
zest for life than during the whole of his previous existence. Not
only had he been working at that which he believed he was fitted
for, and which gave him the stimulus which, one way or another, is
essential to all good work, but he had been thrown among people who
were similarly employed, with whom he had this great common ground
of kinship in ambition and aim. No more were the days too long
from being but half-filled with work with which he had no sympathy,
and diversions that gave him no pleasure; none held sufficient
hours for all that he wanted to put into it. And in this busy
atmosphere, where his own studies took so much of his time and
energy, and where everybody else was in some way similarly
employed, that dismal self-consciousness which so drearily looked
on himself shuffling along through fruitless, uncongenial days was
cracking off him as the chestnut husk cracks when the kernel within
swells and ripens.
Apart from his work, the centre of his life was certainly the
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household of the Falbes, where the brother and sister lived with
their mother. She turned out to be in a rather remote manner "one
of us," and had about her, very faint and dim, like an antique
lavender bag, the odour of Ashbridge. She lived like the lilies of
the field, without toiling or spinning, either literally or with
the more figurative work of the mind; indeed, she can scarcely be
said to have had any mind at all, for, as with drugs, she had
sapped it away by a practically unremitting perusal of all the
fiction that makes the average reader wonder why it was written.
In fact, she supplied the answer to that perplexing question, since
it was clearly written for her. She was not in the least excited
by these tales, any more than the human race are excited by the
oxygen in the air, but she could not live without them. She
subscribed to three lending libraries, which, by this time had
probably learned her tastes, for if she ever by ill-chance embarked
on a volume which ever so faintly adumbrated the realities of life,
she instantly returned it, as she found it painful; and, naturally,
she did not wish to be pained. This did not, however, prevent her
reading those that dealt with amiable young men who fell in love
with amiable young women, and were for the moment sundered by red-
haired adventuresses or black-haired moneylenders, for those she
found not painful but powerful, and could often remember where she
had got to in them, which otherwise was not usually the case. She
wore a good deal of lace, spoke in a tired voice, and must
certainly have been of the type called "sweetly pretty" some
quarter of a century ago. She drank hot water with her meals, and
continually reminded Michael of his own mother.
Sylvia and Hermann certainly did all that could be done for her; in
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other words, they invariably saw that her water was hot, and her
stock of novels replenished. But when that was accomplished, there
really appeared to be little more that could be done for her. Her
presence in a room counted for about as much as a rather powerful
shadow on the wall, unexplained by any solid object which could
have made it appear there. But most of the day she spent in her
own room, which was furnished exactly in accordance with her
twilight existence. There was a writing-table there, which she
never used, several low arm-chairs (one of which she was always
using), by each of which was a small table, on to which she could
put the book that she was at the moment engaged on. Lace hangings,
of the sort that prevent anybody either seeing in or out, obscured
the windows; and for decoration there were china figures on the
chimney-piece, plush-rimmed plates on the walls, and a couple of
easels, draped with chiffon, on which stood enlarged photographs of
her husband and her children.
There was, it may be added, nothing in the least pathetic about
her, for, as far as could be ascertained, she had everything she
wanted. In fact, from the standpoint of commonsense, hers was the
most successful existence; for, knowing what she liked, she passed
her entire life in its accomplishment. The only thing that caused
her emotion was the energy and vitality of her two children, and
even then that emotion was but a mild surprise when she recollected
how tremendous a worker and boisterous a gourmand of life was her
late husband, on the anniversary of whose death she always sat all
day without reading any novels at all, but devoted what was left of
her mind to the contemplation of nothing at all. She had married
him because, for some inscrutable reason, he insisted on it; and
she had been resigned to his death, as to everything else that had
ever happened to her.
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All her life, in fact, she had been of that unchangeable, drab
quality in emotional affairs which is characteristic of advanced
middle-age, when there are no great joys or sorrows to look back
on, and no expectation for the future. She had always had
something of the indestructible quality of frail things like
thistledown or cottonwool; violence and explosion that would blow
strong and distinct organisms to atoms only puffed her a yard or
two away where she alighted again without shock, instead of
injuring or annihilating her. . . . Yet, in the inexplicable ways
of love, Sylvia and her brother not only did what could be done for
her, but regarded her with the tenderest affection. What that love
lived on, what was its daily food would be hard to guess, were it
not that love lives on itself.
The rest of the house, apart from the vacuum of Mrs. Falbe's rooms,
conducted itself, so it seemed to Michael, at the highest possible
pressure. Sylvia and her brother were both far too busy to be
restless, and if, on the one hand, Mrs. Falbe's remote,
impenetrable life was inexplicable, not less inexplicable was the
rage for living that possessed the other two. From morning till
night, and on Sundays from night till morning, life proceeded at
top speed.
As regards household arrangements, which were all in Sylvia's
MICHAEL
71
hands, there were three fixed points in the day. That is to say,
that there was lunch for Mrs. Falbe and anybody else who happened
to be there at half-past one; tea in Mrs. Falbe's well-liked
sitting-room at five, and dinner at eight. These meals--Mrs. Falbe
always breakfasted in her bedroom--were served with quiet decorum.
Apart from them, anybody who required anything consulted the cook
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personally. Hermann, for instance, would have spent the morning at
his piano in the vast studio at the back of their house in
Maidstone Crescent, and not arrived at the fact that it was lunch
time till perhaps three in the afternoon. Unless then he settled
to do without lunch altogether, he must forage for himself; or
Sylvia, having to sing at a concert at eight, would return famished
and exultant about ten; she would then proceed to provide herself,
unless she supped elsewhere, with a plate of eggs and bacon, or
anything else that was easily accessible. It was not from
preference that these haphazard methods were adopted; but since
they only kept two servants, it was clear that a couple of women,
however willing, could not possibly cope with so irregular a
commissariat in addition to the series of fixed hours and the rest
of the household work. As it was, two splendidly efficient
persons, one German, the other English, had filled the posts of
parlourmaid and cook for the last eight years, and regarded
themselves, and were regarded, as members of the family. Lucas,
the parlourmaid, indeed, from the intense interest she took in the
conversation at table, could not always resist joining in it, and
was apt to correct Hermann or his sister if she detected an
inaccuracy in their statements. "No, Miss Sylvia," she would say,
"it was on Thursday, not Wednesday," and then recollecting herself,
would add, "Beg your pardon, miss."
In this milieu, as new to Michael as some suddenly discovered
country, he found himself at once plunged and treated with instant
friendly intimacy. Hermann, so he supposed, must have given him a
good character, for he was made welcome before he could have had
time to make any impression for himself, as Hermann's friend. On
the first occasion of his visiting the house, for the purpose of
his music lesson, he had stopped to lunch afterwards, where he met
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Sylvia, and was in the presence of (you could hardly call it more
than that) their mother.
Mrs. Falbe had faded away in some mist-like fashion soon after, but
it was evident that he was intended to do no such thing, and they
had gone into the studio, already comrades, and Michael had chiefly
listened while the other two had violent and friendly discussions
on every subject under the sun. Then Hermann happened to sit down
at the piano, and played a Chopin etude pianissimo prestissimo with
finger-tips that just made the notes to sound and no more, and
Sylvia told him that he was getting it better; and then Sylvia sang
"Who is Sylvia?" and Hermann told her that she shouldn't have eaten
so much lunch, or shouldn't have sung; and then, by transitions
that Michael could not recollect, they played the Hailstone Chorus
out of Israel in Egypt (or, at any rate, reproduced the spirit of
it), and both sang at the top of their voices. Then, as usually
happened in the afternoon, two or three friends dropped in, and
though these were all intimate with their hosts, Michael had no
impression of being out in the cold or among strangers. And when
MICHAEL
72
he left he felt as if he had been stretching out chilly hands to
the fire, and that the fire was always burning there, ready for him
to heat himself at, with its welcoming flames and core of sincere
warmth, whenever he felt so disposed.
At first he had let himself do this much less often than he would
have liked, for the shyness of years, his over-sensitive modesty at
his own want of charm and lightness, was a self-erected barrier in
his way. He was, in spite of his intimacy with Hermann,
desperately afraid of being tiresome, of checking by his presence,
as he had so often felt himself do before, the ease and high
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spirits of others. But by degrees this broke down; he realised
that he was now among those with whom he had that kinship of the
mind and of tastes which makes the foundation on which friendship,
and whatever friendship may ripen into, is securely built. Never
did the simplicity and sincerity of their welcome fail; the
cordiality which greeted him was always his; he felt that it was
intended that he should be at home there just as much as he cared
to be.
The six working days of the week, however, were as a rule too full
both for the Falbes and for Michael to do more than have, apart
from the music lessons, flying glimpses of each other; for the day
was taken up with work, concerts and opera occurred often in the
evening, and the shuttles of London took their threads in divergent
directions. But on Sunday the house at Maidstone Crescent ceased,
as Hermann said, to be a junction, and became a temporary terminus.
"We burst from our chrysalis, in fact," he said. "If you find it
clearer to understand this way, we burst from our chrysalis and
become a caterpillar. Do chrysalides become caterpillars! We do,
anyhow. If you come about eight you will find food; if you come
later you will also find food of a sketchier kind. People have a
habit of dropping in on Sunday evening. There's music if anyone
feels inclined to make any, and if they don't they are made to.
Some people come early, others late, and they stop to breakfast if
they wish. It's a gaudeamus, you know, a jolly, a jamboree. One
has to relax sometimes."
Michael felt all his old unfitness for dreadful crowds return to
him.
"Oh, I'm so bad at that sort of thing," he said. "I am a frightful
kill-joy, Hermann."
Hermann sat down on the treble part of his piano.
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"That's the most conceited thing I've heard you say yet," he
remarked. "Nobody will pay any attention to you; you won't kill
anybody's joy. Also it's rather rude of you."
"I didn't mean to be rude," said Michael.
"Then we must suppose you were rude by accident. That is the worst
sort of rudeness."
MICHAEL
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"I'm sorry; I'll come," said Michael.
"That's right. You might even find yourself enjoying it by
accident, you know. If you don't, you can go away. There's music;
Sylvia sings quite seriously sometimes, and other people sing or
bring violins, and those who don't like it, talk--and then we get
less serious. Have a try, Michael. See if you can't be less
serious, too."
Michael slipped despairingly from his seat.
"If only I knew how!" he said. "I believe my nurse never taught me
to play, only to remember that I was a little gentleman. All the
same, when I am with you, or with my cousin Francis, I can manage
it to a certain extent."
Falbe looked at him encouragingly.
"Oh, you're getting on," he said. "You take yourself more for
granted than you used to. I remember you when you used to be
polite on purpose. It's doing things on purpose that makes one
serious. If you ever play the fool on purpose, you instantly cease
playing the fool."
"Is that it?" said Michael.
"Yes, of course. So come on Sunday, and forget all about it,
except coming. And now, do you mind going away? I want to put in
a couple of hours before lunch. You know what to practise till
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Tuesday, don't you?"
That was the first Sunday evening that Michael had spent with his
friends; after that, up till this present date in November, he had
not missed a single one of those gatherings. They consisted almost
entirely of men, and of the men there were many types, and many
ages. Actors and artists, musicians and authors were
indiscriminately mingled; it was the strangest conglomeration of
diverse interests. But one interest, so it seemed to Michael,
bound them all together; they were all doing in their different
lives the things they most delighted in doing. There was the key
that unlocked all the locks--namely, the enjoyment that inspired
their work. The freemasonry of art and the freemasonry of the
eager mind that looks out without verdict, but with only
expectation and delight in experiment, passed like an open secret
among them, secret because none spoke of it, open because it was so
transparently obvious. And since this was so, every member of that
heterogeneous community had a respect for his companions; the fact
that they were there together showed that they had all passed this
initiation, and knew what for them life meant.
Very soon after dinner all sitting accommodation, other than the
floor, was occupied; but then the floor held the later comers, and
the smoke from many cigarettes and the babble of many voices made a
constantly-ascending incense before the altar dedicated to the gods
that inspire all enjoyable endeavour. Then Sylvia sang, and both
those who cared to hear exquisite singing and those who did not
MICHAEL
74
were alike silent, for this was a prayer to the gods they all
worshipped; and Falbe played, and there was a quartet of strings.
After that less serious affairs held the rooms; an eminent actor
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was pleased to parody another eminent actor who was also present.
This led to a scene in which each caricatured the other, and a
French poet did gymnastic feats on the floor and upset a tray of
soda-water, and a German conductor fluffed out his hair and died
like Marguerite. And when in the earlier hours of the morning part
of the guests had gone away, and part were broiling ham in the
kitchen, Sylvia sang again, quite seriously, and Michael, in
Hermann's absence, volunteered to play her accompaniment for her.
She stood behind him, and by a finger on his shoulder directed him
in the way she would have him go. Michael found himself suddenly
and inexplicably understanding this; her finger, by its pressure or
its light tapping, seemed to him to speak in a language that he
found himself familiar with, and he slowed down stroking the notes,
or quickened with staccato touch, as she wordlessly directed him.
Out of all these things, which were but trivialities, pleasant,
unthinking hours for all else concerned, several points stood out
for Michael, points new and illuminating. The first was the
simplicity of it all, the spontaneousness with which pleasure was
born if only you took off your clothes, so to speak, and left them
on the bank while you jumped in. All his life he had buttoned his
jacket and crammed his hat on to his head. The second was the
sense, indefinable but certain, that Hermann and Sylvia between
them were the high priests of this memorable orgie.
He himself had met, at dreadful, solemn evenings when Lady
Ashbridge and his father stood at the head of the stairs, the two
eminent actors who had romped to-night, and found them exceedingly
stately personages, just as no doubt they had found him an icy and
awkward young man. But they, like him, had taken their note on
those different occasions from their environment. Perhaps if his
father and mother came here . . . but Michael's imagination quailed
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before such a supposition.
The third point, which gradually through these weeks began to haunt
him more and more, was the personality of Sylvia. He had never
come across a girl who in the least resembled her, probably because
he had not attempted even to find in a girl, or to display in
himself, the signals, winked across from one to the other, of human
companionship. Always he had found a difficulty in talking to a
girl, because he had, in his self-consciousness, thought about what
he should say. There had been the cabalistic question of sex ever
in front of him, a thing that troubled and deterred him. But
Sylvia, with her hand on his shoulder, absorbed in her singing, and
directing him only as she would have pressed the pedal of the piano
if she had been playing to herself, was no more agitating than if
she had been a man; she was just singing, just using him to help
her singing. And even while Michael registered to himself this
charming annihilation of sex, which allowed her to be to him no
more than her brother was--less, in fact, but on the same plane--
she had come to the end of her song, patted him on the back, as she
would have patted anybody else, with a word of thanks, and, for
MICHAEL
75
him, suddenly leaped into significance. It was not only a singer
who had sung, but an individual one called Sylvia Falbe. She took
her place, at present a most inconspicuous one, on the back-cloth
before which Michael's life was acted, towards which, when no
action, so to speak, was taking place, his eyes naturally turned
themselves. His father and mother were there, Francis also and
Aunt Barbara, and of course, larger than the rest, Hermann. Now
Sylvia was discernible, and, as the days went by and their meetings
multiplied, she became bigger, walked into a nearer perspective.
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It did not occur to Michael, rightly, to imagine himself at all in
love with her, for he was not. Only she had asserted herself on
his consciousness.
Not yet had she begun to trouble him, and there was no sign, either
external or intimate, in his mind that he was sickening with the
splendid malady. Indeed, the significance she held for him was
rather that, though she was a girl, she presented none of the
embarrassments which that sex had always held for him. She grew in
comradeship; he found himself as much at ease with her as with her
brother, and her charm was just that which had so quickly and
strongly attracted Michael to Hermann. She was vivid in the same
way as he was; she had the same warm, welcoming kindliness--the
same complete absence of pose. You knew where you were with her,
and hitherto, when Michael was with one of the young ladies brought
down to Ashbridge to be looked at, he only wished that wherever he
was he was somewhere else. But with Sylvia he had none of this
self-consciousness; she was bonne camarade for him in exactly the
same way as she was bonne camarade to the rest of the multitude
which thronged the Sunday evenings, perfectly at ease with them, as
they with her, in relationship entirely unsentimental.
But through these weeks, up to this foggy November afternoon,
Michael's most conscious preoccupation was his music. Falbe's
principles in teaching were entirely heretical according to the
traditional school; he gave Michael no scale to play, no dismal
finger-exercise to fill the hours.
"What is the good of them?" he asked. "They can only give you
nimbleness and strength. Well, you shall acquire your nimbleness
and strength by playing what is worth playing. Take good music,
take Chopin or Bach or Beethoven, and practise one particular etude
or fugue or sonata; you may choose anything you like, and learn
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your nimbleness and strength that way. Read, too; read for a
couple of hours every day. The written language of music must
become so familiar to you that it is to you precisely what a book
or a newspaper is, so that whether you read it aloud--which is
playing--or sit in your arm-chair with your feet on the fender,
reading it not aloud on the piano, but to yourself, it conveys its
definite meaning to you. At your lessons you will have to read
aloud to me. But when you are reading to yourself, never pass over
a bar that you don't understand. It has got to sound in your head,
just as the words you read in a printed book really sound in your
head if you read carefully and listen for them. You know exactly
what they would be like if you said them aloud. Can you read, by
the way? Have a try."
MICHAEL
76
Falbe got down a volume of Bach and opened it at random.
"There," he said, "begin at the top of the page."
"But I can't," said Michael. "I shall have to spell it out."
"That's just what you mustn't do. Go ahead, and don't pause till
you get to the bottom of the page. Count; start each bar when it
comes to its turn, and play as many notes as you can in it."
This was a dismal experience. Michael hitherto had gone on the
painstaking and thorough plan of spelling out his notes with
laborious care. Now Falbe's inexorable voice counted for him,
until it was lost in inextinguishable laughter.
"Go on, go on!" he shouted. "I thought it was Bach, and it is
clearly Strauss's Don Quixote."
Michael, flushed and determined, with grave, set mouth, ploughed
his way through amazing dissonances, and at the end joined Falbe's
laughter.
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"
Oh dear," he said. "Very funny. But don't laugh so at me,
Hermann."
Falbe dried his eyes.
"And what was it?" he said. "I declare it was the fourth fugue.
An entirely different conception of it! A thoroughly original
view! Now, what you've got to do, is to repeat that--not the same
murder I mean, but other murders--for a couple of hours a day. . . .
By degrees--you won't believe it--you will find you are not
murdering any longer, but only mortally wounding. After six months
I dare say you won't even be hurting your victims. All the same,
you can begin with less muscular ones."
In this way Michael's musical horizons were infinitely extended.
Not only did this system of Falbe's of flying at new music, and
going recklessly and regardlessly on, give quickness to his brain
and finger, make his wits alert to pick up the new language he was
learning, but it gloriously extended his vision and his range of
country. He ran joyfully, though with a thousand falls and
tumbles, through these new and wonderful vistas; he worshipped at
the grave, Gothic sanctuaries of Beethoven, he roamed through the
enchanted garden of Chopin, he felt the icy and eternal frosts of
Russia, and saw in the northern sky the great auroras spread
themselves in spear and sword of fire; he listened to the wisdom of
Brahms, and passed through the noble and smiling country of Bach.
All this, so to speak, was holiday travel, and between his journeys
he applied himself with the same eager industry to the learning of
his art, so that he might reproduce for himself and others true
pictures of the scenes through which he scampered. Here Falbe was
not so easily moved to laughter; he was as severe with Michael as
he was with himself, when it was the question of learning some
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piece with a view to really playing it. There was no light-hearted
hurrying on through blurred runs and false notes, slurred phrases
MICHAEL
77
and incomplete chords. Among these pieces which had to be properly
learned was the 17th Prelude of Chopin, on hearing which at
Baireuth on the tuneless and catarrhed piano Falbe had agreed to
take Michael as a pupil. But when it was played again on Falbe's
great Steinway, as a professed performance, a very different
standard was required.
Falbe stopped him at the end of the first two lines.
"This won't do, Michael," he said. "You played it before for me to
see whether you could play. You can. But it won't do to sketch
it. Every note has got to be there; Chopin didn't write them by
accident. He knew quite well what he was about. Begin again,
please."
This time Michael got not quite so far, when he was stopped again.
He was playing without notes, and Falbe got up from his chair where
he had the book open, and put it on the piano.
"Do you find difficulty in memorising?" he asked.
This was discouraging; Michael believed that he remembered easily;
he also believed that he had long known this by heart.
"No; I thought I knew it," he said.
"Try again."
This time Falbe stood by him, and suddenly put his finger down into
the middle of Michael's hands, striking a note.
"You left out that F sharp," he said. "Go on. . . . Now you are
leaving out that E natural. Try to get it better by Thursday, and
remember this, that playing, and all that differentiates playing
from strumming, only begins when you can play all the notes that
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are put down for you to play without fail. You're beginning at the
wrong end; you have admirable feeling about that prelude, but you
needn't think about feeling till you've got all the notes at your
fingers' ends. Then and not till then, you may begin to remember
that you want to be a pianist. Now, what's the next thing?"
Michael felt somewhat squashed and discouraged. He had thought he
had really worked successfully at the thing he knew so well by
sight. His heavy eyebrows drew together.
"You told me to harmonise that Christmas carol," he remarked,
rather shortly.
Falbe put his hand on his shoulder.
"Look here, Michael," he said, "you're vexed with me. Now, there's
nothing to be vexed at. You know quite well you were leaving out
lots of notes from those jolly fat chords, and that you weren't
playing cleanly. Now I'm taking you seriously, and I won't have
from you anything but the best you can do. You're not doing your
best when you don't even play what is written. You can't begin to
MICHAEL
78
work at this till you do that."
Michael had a moment's severe tussle with his temper. He felt
vexed and disappointed that Hermann should have sent him back like
a schoolboy with his exercise torn over. Not immediately did he
confess to himself that he was completely in the wrong.
"I'm doing the best I can," he said. "It's rather discouraging."
He moved his big shoulders slightly, as if to indicate that
Hermann's hand was not wanted there. Hermann kept it there.
"It might be discouraging," he said, "if you were doing your best."
Michael's ill-temper oozed from him.
"I'm wrong," he said, turning round with the smile that made his
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ugly face so pleasant. "And I'm sorry both that I have been slack
and that I've been sulky. Will that do?"
Falbe laughed.
"Very well indeed," he said. "Now for 'Good King Wenceslas.'
Wasn't it--"
"Yes; I got awfully interested over it, Hermann. I thought I would
try and work it up into a few variations."
"Let's hear," said Falbe.
This was a vastly different affair. Michael had shown both
ingenuity and a great sense of harmonic beauty in the arrangement
of the very simple little tune that Falbe had made him exercise his
ear over, and the half-dozen variations that followed showed a
wonderfully mature handling. The air which he dealt with haunted
them as a sort of unseen presence. It moved in a tiny gavotte, or
looked on at a minuet measure; it wailed, yet without being
positively heard, in a little dirge of itself; it broadened into a
march, it shouted in a bravura of rapid octaves, and finally
asserted itself, heard once more, over a great scale base of bells.
Falbe, as was his habit when interested, sat absolutely still, but
receptive and alert, instead of jerking and fidgeting as he had
done over Michael's fiasco in the Chopin prelude, and at the end he
jumped up with a certain excitement.
"Do you know what you've done?" he said. "You've done something
that's really good. Faults? Yes, millions; but there's a first-
rate imagination at the bottom of it. How did it happen?"
Michael flushed with pleasure.
"Oh, they sang themselves," he said, "and I learned them. But will
it really do? Is there anything in it?"
"Yes, old boy, there's King Wenceslas in it, and you've dressed him
MICHAEL
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79
up well. Play that last one again."
The last one was taxing to the fingers, but Michael's big hands
banged out the octave scale in the bass with wonderful ease, and
Falbe gave a great guffaw of pleasure at the rollicking conclusion.
"Write them all down," he said, "and try if you can hear it singing
half a dozen more. If you can, write them down also, and give me
leave to play the lot at my concert in January."
Michael gasped.
"You don't mean that?" he said.
"Certainly I do. It's a fine bit of stuff."
It was with these variations, now on the point of completion that
Michael meant to spend his solitary and rapturous evening. The
spirits of the air--whatever those melodious sprites may be--had
for the last month made themselves very audible to him, and the
half-dozen further variations that Hermann had demanded had rung
all day in his head. Now, as they neared completion, he found that
they ceased their singing; their work of dictation was done; he had
to this extent expressed himself, and they haunted him no longer.
At present he had but jotted down the skeleton of bars that could
be filled in afterwards, and it gave him enormous pleasure to see
the roles reversed and himself out of his own brain, setting Falbe
his task.
But he felt much more than this. He had done something. Michael,
the dumb, awkward Michael, was somehow revealed on those eight
pages of music. All his twenty-five years he had stood wistfully
inarticulate, unable, so it had seemed to him, to show himself, to
let himself out. And not till now, when he had found this means of
access, did he know how passionately he had desired it, nor how
immensely, in the process of so doing, his desire had grown. He
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must find out more ways, other channels of projecting himself. The
need for that, as of a diver throwing himself into the empty air
and the laughing waters below him, suddenly took hold of him.
He took a clean sheet of music paper, into which he placed his
pages, and with a pleasurable sense of pomp wrote in the centre of
it:
VARIATIONS ON AN AIR.
By
Michael Comber.
He paused a moment, then took up his pen again.
"Dedicated to Sylvia Falbe," he wrote at the top.
MICHAEL
80
CHAPTER VII
Michael had been so engrossingly employed since his return to
London in the autumn that the existence of other ties and other
people apart from those immediately connected with his work had
worn a very shadow-like aspect. He had, it is true, written with
some regularity to his mother, finding, somewhat to his dismay, how
very slight the common ground between them was for purposes of
correspondence. He could outline the facts that he had been to
several concerts, that he had seen much of his music-master, that
he had been diligent at his work, but he realised that there was
nothing in detail about those things that could possibly interest
her, and that nothing except them really interested him. She on
her side had little to say except to record the welfare of Petsy,
to remark on the beauty of October, and tell him how many shooting
parties they had had.
His correspondence with his father had been less frequent, and
absolutely one-sided, since Lord Ashbridge took no notice at all of
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his letters. Michael regretted this, as showing that he was still
outcast, but it cannot be said to have come between him and the
sunshine, for he had begun to manufacture the sunshine within, that
internal happiness which his environment and way of life produced,
which seemed to be independent of all that was not directly
connected with it. But a letter which he received next morning
from his mother stated, in addition to the fact that Petsy had
another of her tiresome bilious attacks (poor lamb), that his
father and she thought it right that he should come down to
Ashbridge for Christmas. It conveyed the sense that at this joyful
season a truce, probably limited in duration, and, even while it
lasted, of the nature of a strongly-armed neutrality, was
proclaimed, but the prospect was not wholly encouraging, for Lady
Ashbridge added that she hoped Michael would not "go on" vexing his
father. What precisely Michael was expected to do in order to
fulfil that wish was not further stated, but he wrote dutifully
enough to say that he would come down at Christmas.
But the letter rekindled his dormant sense of there being other
people in the world beside his immediate circle; also, indefinably,
it gave him the sense that his mother wanted him. That should be
so then, and sequentially he remembered with a pang of self-
reproach that he had not as much as indicated his presence in
London to Aunt Barbara, or set eyes on her since their meeting in
August. He knew she was in London, since he had seen her name in
some paragraph in the papers not long before, and instantly wrote
to ask her to dine with him at a near date. Her answer was
characteristic.
"Of course I'll dine with you, my dear," she wrote; "it will be
delightful. And what has happened to you? Your letter actually
conveyed a sense of cordiality. You never used to be cordial. And
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I wish to meet some of your nice friends. Ask one or two, please--
a prima donna of some kind and a pianist, I think. I want them
weird and original--the prima donna with short hair, and the
MICHAEL
81
pianist with long. In Tony's new station in life I never see
anybody except the sort of people whom your father likes. Are you
forgiven yet, by the way?"
Michael found himself on the grin at the thought of Aunt Barbara
suddenly encountering the two magnificent Falbes (prima donna and
pianist exactly as she had desired) as representing the weird sort
of people whom she pictured his living among, and the result quite
came up to his expectations. As usual, Aunt Barbara was late, and
came in talking rapidly about the various causes that had detained
her, which her fruitful imagination had suggested to her as she
dressed. In order, perhaps, to suit herself to the circle in which
she would pass the evening, she had put on (or, rather, it looked
as if her maid had thrown at her) a very awful sort of tea-gown,
brown and prickly-looking, and adapted to Bohemian circles. She,
with the same lively imagination, had pictured Michael in a
velveteen coat and soft shirt, the pianist as very small, with
spectacles and long hair, and the prima donna a full-blown kind of
barmaid with Roman pearls. . . .
"Yes, my dear, I know I am late," she began before she was inside
the door, "but Og had so much to say, and there was a block at Hyde
Park Corner. My dear Michael, how smart you look!"
She came round the corner of the screen and the Falbes burst upon
her, Hermann and Sylvia standing by the fire. For the short,
spectacled pianist there was this very tall, English-looking young
man, upright and soldierly, with his handsome, boyish face and
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well-fitting clothes. That was bad enough, but infinitely worse
was she who was to have been the full-blown barmaid. Instead was
this magnificent girl, nearly as tall as her brother, with her
small oval face crowning the column of her neck, her eyes merry,
her mouth laughing at some brotherly retort that Hermann had just
made. Aunt Barbara took her in with one second's survey--her face,
her neck, her beautiful dress, her whole air of ease and good-
breeding, and gave a despairing glance at her own prickly tea-gown.
For the moment, amiably accustomed as she was to laugh at herself,
she did not find it humourous.
"Miss Sylvia Falbe, Aunt Barbara," said Michael with a little
tremor in his voice; "and Mr. Hermann Falbe, Lady Barbara Jerome,"
he added, rather as if he expected nobody to believe it.
Aunt Barbara made the best of it: shook hands in her jolly manner,
and burst into laughter.
"Michael, I could slay you," she said; "but before I do that I must
tell your friends all about it. This horrible nephew of mine, Miss
Falbe, promised me two weird musicians, and I expected--I really
can't tell you what I expected--but there were to be spectacles and
velveteen coats and the general air of an afternoon concert at
Clapham Junction. But it is nice to be made such a fool of. I
feel precisely like an elderly and sour governess who has been
ordered to come down to dinner so that there shan't be thirteen.
Give me your arm, Mr. Falbe, and take me in to dinner at once,
where I may drown my embarrassment in soup. Or does Michael go in
MICHAEL
82
first? Go on, wretch!"
Presently they were seated at dinner, and Aunt Barbara could not
help enlarging a little on her own discomfiture.
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"It is all your fault, Michael," she said. "You have been in
London all these weeks without letting me know anything about you
or your friends, or what you were doing; so naturally I supposed
you were leading some obscure kind of existence. Instead of which
I find this sort of thing. My dear, what good soup! I shall see
if I can't induce your cook to leave you. But bachelors always
have the best of everything. Now tell me about your visit to
Germany. Which was the point where we parted--Baireuth, wasn't it?
I would not go to Baireuth with anybody!"
"I went with Mr. Falbe," said Michael.
"Ah, Mr. Falbe has not asked me yet. I may have to revise what I
say," said Aunt Barbara daringly.
"I didn't ask Michael," said Hermann. "I got into his carriage as
the train was moving; and my luggage was left behind."
"I was left behind," said Sylvia, "which was worse. But I sent
Hermann's luggage."
"So expeditiously that it arrived the day before we left for
Munich," remarked Hermann.
"And that's all the gratitude I get. But in the interval you lived
upon Lord Comber."
"I do still in the money I earn by giving him music lessons. Mike,
have you finished the Variations yet?"
"Variations--what are Variations?" asked Aunt Barbara.
"Yes, two days ago. Variations are all the things you think about
on the piano, Aunt Barbara, when you are playing a tune made by
somebody else."
"Should I like them? Will Mr. Falbe play them to me?" asked she.
"I daresay he will if he can. But I thought you loathed music."
"It certainly depends on who makes it," said Aunt Barbara. "I
don't like ordinary music, because the person who made it doesn't
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matter to me. But if, so to speak, it sounds like somebody I know,
it is a different matter."
Michael turned to Sylvia.
"I want to ask your leave for something I have already done," he
said.
"And if I don't give it you?"
MICHAEL
83
"Then I shan't tell you what it is."
Sylvia looked at him with her candid friendly eyes. Her brother
always told her that she never looked at anybody except her
friends; if she was engaged in conversation with a man she did not
like, she looked at his shirt-stud or at a point slightly above his
head.
"Then, of course, I give in," she said. "I must give you leave if
otherwise I shan't know what you have done. But it's a mean trick.
Tell me at once."
"I've dedicated the Variations to you," he said.
Sylvia flushed with pleasure.
"Oh, but that's absolutely darling of you," she said. "Have you,
really? Do you mean it?"
"If you'll allow me."
"Allow you? Hermann, the Variations are mine. Isn't it too
lovely?"
It was at this moment that Aunt Barbara happened to glance at
Michael, and it suddenly struck her that it was a perfectly new
Michael whom she looked at. She knew and was secretly amused at
the fiasco that always attended the introduction of amiable young
ladies to Ashbridge, and had warned her sister-in-law that Michael,
when he chose the girl he wanted, would certainly do it on his own
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initiative. Now she felt sure that Michael, though he might not be
aware of it himself, was, even if he had not chosen, beginning to
choose. There was that in his eyes which none of the importations
to Ashbridge had ever seen there, that eager deferential attention,
which shows that a young man is interested because it is a girl he
is talking to. That, she knew, had never been characteristic of
Michael; indeed, it would not have been far from the truth to say
that the fact that he was talking to a girl was sufficient to make
his countenance wear an expression of polite boredom. Then for a
while, as dinner progressed, she doubted the validity of her
conclusion, for the Michael who was entertaining her to-night was
wholly different from the Michael she had known and liked and
pitied. She felt that she did not know this new one yet, but she
was certain that she liked him, and equally sure that she did not
pity him at all. He had found his place, he had found his work; he
evidently fitted into his life, which, after all, is the surest
ground of happiness, and it might be that it was only general joy,
so to speak, that kindled that pleasant fire in his face. And then
once more she went back to her first conclusion, for talking to
Michael herself she saw, as a woman so infallibly sees, that he
gave her but the most superficial attention--sufficient, indeed, to
allow him to answer intelligently and laugh at the proper places,
but his mind was not in the least occupied with her. If Sylvia
moved his glance flickered across in her direction: it was she who
gave him his alertness. Aunt Barbara felt that she could have told
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him truthfully that he was in love with her, and she rather thought
that it would be news to him; probably he did not know it yet
himself. And she wondered what his father would say when he knew it.
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"And then Munich," she said, violently recalling Michael's
attention towards her. "Munich I could have borne better than
Baireuth, and when Mr. Falbe asks me there I shall probably go.
Your Uncle Tony was in Germany then, by the way; he went over at
the invitation of the Emperor to the manoeuvres."
"Did he? The Emperor came to Munich for a day during them. He was
at the opera," said Michael.
"You didn't speak to him, I suppose?" she asked.
"Yes; he sent for me, and talked a lot. In fact, he talked too
much, because I didn't hear a note of the second act."
Aunt Barbara became infinitely more interested.
"Tell me all about it, Michael," she said. "What did he talk
about?"
"Everything, as far as I can remember, England, Ashbridge, armies,
navies, music. Hermann says he cast pearls before swine--"
"And his tone, his attitude?" she asked.
"Towards us?--towards England? Immensely friendly, and most
inquisitive. I was never asked so many questions in so short a
time."
Aunt Barbara suddenly turned to Falbe.
"And you?" she asked. "Were you with Michael?"
"No, Lady Barbara. I had no pearls."
"And are you naturalised English?" she asked.
"No; I am German."
She slid swiftly off the topic.
"Do you wonder I ask, with your talking English so perfectly?" she
said. "You should hear me talking French when we are entertaining
Ambassadors and that sort of persons. I talk it so fast that
nobody can understand a word I say. That is a defensive measure,
you must observe, because even if I talked it quite slowly they
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would understand just as little. But they think it is the pace
that stupefies them, and they leave me in a curious, dazed
condition. And now Miss Falbe and I are going to leave you two.
Be rather a long time, dear Michael, so that Mr. Falbe can tell you
what he thinks of me, and his sister shall tell me what she thinks
of you. Afterwards you and I will tell each other, if it is not
too fearful."
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85
This did not express quite accurately Lady Barbara's intentions,
for she chiefly wanted to find out what she thought of Sylvia.
"And you are great friends, you three?" she said as they settled
themselves for the prolonged absence of the two men.
Sylvia smiled; she smiled, Aunt Barbara noticed, almost entirely
with her eyes, using her mouth only when it came to laughing; but
her eyes smiled quite charmingly.
"That's always rather a rash thing to pronounce on," she said. "I
can tell you for certain that Hermann and I are both very fond of
him, but it is presumptuous for us to say that he is equally
devoted to us."
"My dear, there is no call for modesty about it," said Barbara.
"Between you--for I imagine it is you who have done it--between you
you have made a perfectly different creature of the boy. You've
made him flower."
Sylvia became quite grave.
"Oh, I do hope he likes us," she said. "He is so likable himself."
Barbara nodded
"And you've had the good sense to find that out," she said. "It's
astonishing how few people knew it. But then, as I said, Michael
hadn't flowered. No one understood him, or was interested. Then
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he suddenly made up his mind last summer what he wanted to do and
be, and immediately did and was it."
"I think he told Hermann," said she. "His father didn't approve,
did he?"
"Approve? My dear, if you knew my brother you would know that the
only things he approves of are those which Michael isn't."
Sylvia spread her fine hands out to the blaze, warming them and
shading her face.
"Michael always seems to us--" she began. "Ah, I called him
Michael by mistake."
"Then do it on purpose next time," remarked Barbara. "What does
Michael seem?"
"Ah, but don't let him know I called him Michael," said Sylvia in
some horror. "There is nothing so awful as to speak of people
formally to their faces, and intimately behind their backs. But
Hermann is always talking of him as Michael."
"And Michael always seems--"
"Oh, yes; he always seems to me to have been part of us, of Hermann
MICHAEL
86
and me, for years. He's THERE, if you know what I mean, and so few
people are there. They walk about your life, and go in and out, so
to speak, but Michael stops. I suppose it's because he is so
natural."
Aunt Barbara had been a diplomatist long before her husband, and
fearful of appearing inquisitive about Sylvia's impression of
Michael, which she really wanted to inquire into, instantly changed
the subject.
"Ah, everybody who has got definite things to do is natural," she
said. "It is only the idle people who have leisure to look at
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themselves in the glass and pose. And I feel sure that you have
definite things to do and plenty of them, my dear. What are they?"
"Oh, I sing a little," said Sylvia.
"That is the first unnatural thing you have said. I somehow feel
that you sing a great deal."
Aunt Barbara suddenly got up.
"My dear, you are not THE Miss Falbe, are you, who drove London
crazy with delight last summer. Don't tell me you are THE Miss
Falbe?"
Sylvia laughed.
"Do you know, I'm afraid I must be," she said. "Isn't it dreadful
to have to say that after your description?"
Aunt Barbara sat down again, in a sort of calm despair.
"If there are any more shocks coming for me to-night," she said, "I
think I had better go home. I have encountered a perfectly new
nephew Michael. I have dressed myself like a suburban housekeeper
to meet a Poiret, so don't deny it, and having humourously told
Michael I wished to see a prima donna and a pianist, he takes me at
my word and produces THE Miss Falbe. I'm glad I knew that in time;
I should infallibly have asked you to sing, and if you had done so--
you are probably good-natured enough to have done even that--I
should have given the drawing-room gasp at the end, and told your
brother that I thought you sang very prettily."
Sylvia laughed.
"But really it wasn't my fault, Lady Barbara," she said. "When we
met I couldn't have said, 'Beware! I am THE Miss Falbe.'"
"No, my dear; but I think you ought, somehow, to have conveyed the
impression that you were a tremendous swell. You didn't. I have
been thinking of you as a charming girl, and nothing more."
"But that's quite good enough for me," said Sylvia.
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The two young men joined them after this, and Hermann speedily
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87
became engrossed in reading the finished Variations. Some of these
pleased him mightily; one he altogether demurred to.
"It's just a crib, Mike," he said. "The critics would say I had
forgotten it, and put in instead what I could remember of a
variation out of the Handel theme. That next one's, oh, great fun.
But I wish you would remember that we all haven't got great orang-
outang paws like you."
Aunt Barbara stopped in the middle of her sentence; she knew
Michael's old sensitiveness about these physical disabilities, and
she had a moment's cold horror at the thought of Falbe having said
so miserably tactless a thing to him. But the horror was of
infinitesimal duration, for she heard Michael's laugh as they
leaned over the top of the piano together.
"I wish you had, Hermann," he said. "I know you'll bungle those
tenths."
Falbe moved to the piano-seat.
"Oh, let's have a shot at it," he said. "If Lady Barbara won't
mind, play that one through to me first, Mike."
"Oh, presently, Hermann," he said. "It makes such an infernal row
that you can't hear anything else afterwards. Do sing, Miss
Sylvia; my aunt won't really mind--will you, Aunt Barbara?"
"Michael, I have just learned that this is THE Miss Falbe," she
said. "I am suffering from shock. Do let me suffer from coals of
fire, too."
Michael gently edged Hermann away from the music-stool. Much as he
enjoyed his master's accompaniment he was perfectly sure that he
preferred, if possible, to play for Sylvia himself than have the
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pleasure of listening to anybody else.
"And may I play for you, Miss Sylvia?" he asked.
"Yes, will you? Thanks, Lord Comber."
Hermann moved away.
"And so Mr. Hermann sits down by Lady Barbara while Lord Comber
plays for Miss Sylvia," he observed, with emphasis on the titles.
A sudden amazing boldness seized Michael.
"Sylvia, then," he said.
"All right, Michael," answered the girl, laughing.
She came and stood on the left of the piano, slightly behind him.
"And what are we going to have?" asked Michael.
MICHAEL
88
"It must be something we both know, for I've brought no music,"
said she.
Michael began playing the introduction to the Hugo Wolff song which
he had accompanied for her one Sunday night at their house. He
knew it perfectly by heart, but stumbled a little over the
difficult syncopated time. This was not done without purpose, for
the next moment he felt her hand on his shoulder marking it for him.
"Yes, that's right," she said. "Now you've got it." And Michael
smiled sweetly at his own amazing ingenuity.
Hermann put down the Variations, which he still had in his hand,
when Sylvia's voice began. Unaccustomed as she was to her
accompanist, his trained ear told him that she was singing
perfectly at ease, and was completely at home with her player.
Occasionally she gave Michael some little indication, as she had
done before, but for the most part her fingers rested immobile on
his shoulder, and he seemed to understand her perfectly. Somehow
this was a surprise to him; he had not known that Michael possessed
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that sort of second-sight that unerringly feels and translates into
the keys the singer's mood. For himself he always had to attend
most closely when he was playing for his sister, but familiar as he
was with her singing, he felt that Michael divined her certainly as
well as himself, and he listened to the piano more than to the voice.
"You extraordinary creature," he said when the song was over.
"Where did you learn to accompany?"
Suddenly Michael felt an access of shyness, as if he had been
surprised when he thought himself private.
"Oh, I've played it before for Miss--I mean for Sylvia," he said.
Then he turned to the girl.
"Thanks, awfully," he said. "And I'm greedy. May we have one
more?"
He slid into the opening bars of "Who is Sylvia?" That song, since
he had heard her sing it at her recital in the summer, had grown in
significance to him, even as she had. It had seemed part of her
then, but then she was a stranger. To-night it was even more
intimately part of her, and she was a friend.
Hermann strolled across to the fireplace at the end of this, and
lit a cigarette.
"My sister's a blatant egoist, Lady Barbara," he said. "She loves
singing about herself. And she lays it on pretty thick, too,
doesn't she? Now, Sylvia, if you've finished--quite finished, I
mean--do come and sit down and let me try these Variations--"
"Shall we surrender, Michael?" asked the girl. "Or shall we stick
to the piano, now we've got it? If Hermann once sits down, you
know, we shan't get him away for the rest of the evening. I can't
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sing any more, but we might play a duet to keep him out."
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Hermann rushed to the piano, took his sister by the shoulders, and
pushed her into a chair.
"You sit there," he said, "and listen to something not about
yourself. Michael, if you don't come away from that piano, I shall
take Sylvia home at once. Now you may all talk as much as you
like; you won't interrupt me one atom--but you'll have to talk loud
in certain parts."
Then a feat of marvellous execution began. Michael had taken an
evil pleasure in giving his master, for whom he slaved with so
unwearied a diligence, something that should tax his powers, and he
gave a great crash of laughter when for a moment Hermann was
brought to a complete standstill in an octave passage of triplets
against quavers, and the performer exultantly joined in it, as he
pushed his hair back from his forehead, and made a second attempt.
"It isn't decent to ask a fellow to read that," he shouted. "It's
a crime; it's a scandal."
"My dear, nobody asked you to read it," said Sylvia.
"Silence, you chit! Mike, come here a minute. Sit down one second
and play that. Promise to get up again, though, immediately. Just
these three bars--yes, I see. An orang-outang apparently can do
it, so why not I? Am I not much better than they? Go away,
please; or, rather, stop there and turn over. Why couldn't you
have finished the page with the last act, and started this one
fresh, instead of making this Godforsaken arrangement? Now!"
A very simple little minuet measure followed this outrageous
passage, and Hermann's exquisite lightness of touch made it sound
strangely remote, as if from a mile away, or a hundred years ago,
some graceful echo was evoked again. Then the little dirge wept
for the memories of something that had never happened, and leaving
out the number he disapproved of, as reminiscent of the Handel
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theme, Hermann gathered himself up again for the assertion of the
original tune, with its bars of scale octaves. The contagious
jollity of it all seized the others, and Sylvia, with full voice,
and Aunt Barbara, in a strange hooting, sang to it.
Then Hermann banged out the last chord, and jumped up from his
seat, rolling up the music.
"I go straight home," he said, "and have a peaceful hour with it.
Michael, old boy, how did you do it? You've been studying
seriously for a few months only, and so this must all have been in
you before. And you've come to the age you are without letting any
of it out. I suppose that's why it has come with a rush. You knew
it all along, while you were wasting your time over drilling your
toy soldiers. Come on, Sylvia, or I shall go without you. Good
night, Lady Barbara. Half-past ten to-morrow, Michael."
Protest was clearly useless; and, having seen the two off, Michael
MICHAEL
90
came upstairs again to Aunt Barbara, who had no intention of going
away just yet.
"And so these are the people you have been living with," she said.
"No wonder you had not time to come and see me. Do they always go
that sort of pace--it is quicker than when I talk French."
Michael sank into a chair.
"Oh, yes, that's Hermann all over," he said. "But--but just think
what it means to me! He's going to play my tunes at his concert.
Michael Comber, Op. 1. O Lord! O Lord!"
"And you just met him in the train?" said Aunt Barbara.
"Yes; second class, Victoria Station, with Sylvia on the platform.
I didn't much notice Sylvia then."
This and the inference that naturally followed was as much as could
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be expected, and Aunt Barbara did not appear to wait for anything
more on the subject of Sylvia. She had seen sufficient of the
situation to know where Michael was most certainly bound for. Yet
the very fact of Sylvia's outspoken friendliness with him made her
wonder a little as to what his reception would be. She would
hardly have said so plainly that she and her brother were devoted
to him if she had been devoted to him with that secret tenderness
which, in its essentials, is reticent about itself. Her half-
hour's conversation with the girl had given her a certain insight
into her; still more had her attitude when she stood by Michael as
he played for her, and put her hand on his shoulder precisely as
she would have done if it had been another girl who was seated at
the piano. Without doubt Michael had a real existence for her, but
there was no sign whatever that she hailed it, as a girl so
unmistakably does, when she sees it as part of herself.
"More about them," she said. "What are they? Who are they?"
He outlined for her, giving the half-English, half-German
parentage, the shadow-like mother, the Bavarian father, Sylvia's
sudden and comet-like rising in the musical heaven, while her
brother, seven years her senior, had spent his time in earning in
order to give her the chance which she had so brilliantly taken.
Now it was to be his turn, the shackles of his drudgery no longer
impeded him, and he, so Michael radiantly prophesied, was to have
his rocket-like leap to the zenith, also.
"And he's German?" she asked.
"Yes. Wasn't he rude about my being a toy soldier? But that's the
natural German point of view, I suppose."
Michael strolled to the fireplace.
"Hermann's so funny," he said. "For days and weeks together you
would think he was entirely English, and then a word slips from him
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like that, which shows he is entirely German. He was like that in
MICHAEL
91
Munich, when the Emperor appeared and sent for me."
Aunt Barbara drew her chair a little nearer the fire, and sat up.
"I want to hear about that," she said.
"But I've told you; he was tremendously friendly in a national
manner."
"And that seemed to you real?" she asked.
Michael considered.
"I don't know that it did," he said. "It all seemed to me rather
feverish, I think."
"And he asked quantities of questions, I think you said."
"Hundreds. He was just like what he was when he came to Ashbridge.
He reviewed the Yeomanry, and shot pheasants, and spent the
afternoon in a steam launch, apparently studying the deep-water
channel of the river, where it goes underneath my father's place;
and then in the evening there was a concert."
Aunt Barbara did not heed the concert.
"Do you mean the channel up from Harwich," she asked, "of which the
Admiralty have the secret chart?"
"I fancy they have," said Michael. "And then after the concert
there was the torchlight procession, with the bonfire on the top of
the hill."
"I wasn't there. What else?"
"I think that's all," said Michael. "But what are you driving at,
Aunt Barbara?"
She was silent a moment.
"I'm driving at this," she said. "The Germans are accumulating a
vast quantity of knowledge about England. Tony, for instance, has
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a German valet, and when he went down to Portsmouth the other day
to see the American ship that was there, he took him with him. And
the man took a camera and was found photographing where no
photography is allowed. Did you see anything of a camera when the
Emperor came to Ashbridge?"
Michael thought.
"Yes; one of his staff was clicking away all day," he said. "He
sent a lot of them to my mother."
"And, we may presume, kept some copies himself," remarked Aunt
Barbara drily. "Really, for childish simplicity the English are
the biggest fools in creation."
MICHAEL
92
"But do you mean--"
"I mean that the Germans are a very knowledge-seeking people, and
that we gratify their desires in a very simple fashion. Do you
think they are so friendly, Michael? Do you know, for instance,
what is a very common toast in German regimental messes? They do
not drink it when there are foreigners there, but one night during
the manoeuvres an officer in a mess where Tony was dining got
slightly 'on,' as you may say, and suddenly drank to 'Der Tag.'"
"That means 'The Day,'" said Michael confidently.
"It does; and what day? The day when Germany thinks that all is
ripe for a war with us. 'Der Tag' will dawn suddenly from a quiet,
peaceful night, when they think we are all asleep, and when they
have got all the information they think is accessible. War, my
dear."
Michael had never in his life seen his aunt so serious, and he was
amazed at her gravity.
"There are hundreds and hundreds of their spies all over England,"
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she said, "and hundreds of their agents all over America. Deep,
patient Germany, as Carlyle said. She's as patient as God and as
deep as the sea. They are working, working, while our toy soldiers
play golf. I agree with that adorable pianist; and, what's more, I
believe they think that 'Der Tag' is near to dawn. Tony says that
their manoeuvres this year were like nothing that has ever been
seen before. Germany is a fighting machine without parallel in the
history of the world."
She got up and stood with Michael near the fireplace.
"And they think their opportunity is at hand," she said, "though
not for a moment do they relax their preparations. We are their
real enemy, don't you see? They can fight France with one hand and
Russia with the other; and in a few months' time now they expect we
shall be in the throes of an internal revolution over this Irish
business. They may be right, but there is just the possibility
that they may be astoundingly wrong. The fact of the great foreign
peril--this nightmare, this Armageddon of European war--may be
exactly that which will pull us together. But their diplomatists,
anyhow, are studying the Irish question very closely, and German
gold, without any doubt at all, is helping the Home Rule party. As
a nation we are fast asleep. I wonder what we shall be like when
we wake. Shall we find ourselves already fettered when we wake, or
will there be one moment, just one moment, in which we can spring
up? At any rate, hitherto, the English have always been at their
best, not their worst, in desperate positions. They hate exciting
themselves, and refuse to do it until the crisis is actually on
them. But then they become disconcertingly serious and cool-
headed."
"And you think the Emperor--" began Michael.
MICHAEL
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93
"I think the Emperor is the hardest worker in all Germany," said
Barbara. "I believe he is trying (and admirably succeeding) to
make us trust his professions of friendship. He has a great eye
for detail, too; it seemed to him worth while to assure you even,
my dear Michael, of his regard and affection for England. He was
always impressing on Tony the same thing, though to him, of course,
he said that if there was any country nearer to his heart than
England it was America. Stuff and nonsense, my dear!"
All this, though struck in a more serious key than was usual with
Aunt Barbara, was quite characteristic of her. She had the quality
of mind which when occupied with one idea is occupied with it to
the exclusion of all others; she worked at full power over anything
she took up. But now she dismissed it altogether.
"You see what a diplomatist I have become," she said. "It is a
fascinating business: one lives in an atmosphere that is charged
with secret affairs, and it infects one like the influenza. You
catch it somehow, and have a feverish cold of your own. And I am
quite useful to him. You see, I am such a chatterbox that people
think I let out things by accident, which I never do. I let out
what I want to let out on purpose, and they think they are pumping
me. I had a long conversation the other day with one of the German
Embassy, all about Irish affairs. They are hugely interested about
Irish affairs, and I just make a note of that; but they can make as
many notes as they please about what I say, and no one will be any
the wiser. In fact, they will be the foolisher. And now I suppose
I had better take myself away."
"Don't do anything of the kind," said Michael.
"But I must. And if when you are down at Ashbridge at Christmas
you find strangers hanging about the deep-water reach, you might
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just let me know. It's no use telling your father, because he will
certainly think they have come to get a glimpse of him as he plays
golf. But I expect you'll be too busy thinking about that new
friend of yours, and perhaps his sister. What did she tell me we
had got to do? 'To her garlands let us bring,' was it not? You
and I will both send wreaths, Michael, though not for her funeral.
Now don't be a hermit any more, but come and see me. You shall
take your garland girl into dinner, if she will come, too; and her
brother shall certainly sit next me. I am so glad you have become
yourself at last. Go on being yourself more and more, my dear: it
suits you."
CHAPTER VIII
Some fortnight later, and not long before Michael was leaving town
for his Christmas visit to Ashbridge, Sylvia and her brother were
lingering in the big studio from which the last of their Sunday
evening guests had just departed. The usual joyous chaos
consequent on those entertainments reigned: the top of the piano
was covered with the plates and glasses of those who had made an
alfresco supper (or breakfast) of fried bacon and beer before
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94
leaving; a circle of cushions were ranged on the floor round the
fire, for it was a bitterly cold night, and since, for some reason,
a series of charades had been spontaneously generated, there was
lying about an astonishing collection of pillow-cases, rugs, and
table-cloths, and such articles of domestic and household use as
could be converted into clothes for this purpose. But the event of
the evening had undoubtedly been Hermann's performance of the
"Wenceslas Variations"; these he had now learned, and, as he had
promised Michael, was going to play them at his concert in the
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Steinway Hall in January. To-night a good many musician friends
had attended the Sunday evening gathering, and there had been no
two opinions about the success of them.
"I was talking to Arthur Lagden about them," said Falbe, naming a
prominent critic of the day, "and he would hardly believe that they
were an Opus I., or that Michael had not been studying music
technically for years instead of six months. But that's the odd
thing about Mike; he's so mature."
It was not unusual for the brother and sister to sit up like this,
till any hour, after their guests had gone; and Sylvia collected a
bundle of cushions and lay full length on the floor, with her feet
towards the fire. For both of them the week was too busy on six
days for them to indulge that companionship, sometimes full of
talk, sometimes consisting of those dropped words and long
silences, on which intimacy lives; and they both enjoyed, above all
hours in the week, this time that lay between the friendly riot of
Sunday evening and the starting of work again on Monday. There was
between them that bond which can scarcely exist between husband and
wife, since it almost necessarily implies the close consanguinity
of brother and sister, and postulates a certain sort of essential
community of nature, founded not on tastes, nor even on affection,
but on the fact that the same blood beats in the two. Here an
intense affection, too strong to be ever demonstrative, fortified
it, and both brother and sister talked to each other, as if they
were speaking to some physically independent piece of themselves.
Sylvia had nothing apparently to add on the subject of Michael's
maturity. Instead she just raised her head, which was not quite
high enough.
"Stuff another cushion under my head, Hermann," she said. "Thanks;
now I'm completely comfortable, you will be relieved to hear."
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Hermann gazed at the fire in silence.
"That's a weight off my mind," he said. "About Michael now. He's
been suppressed all his life, you know, and instead of being
dwarfed he has just gone on growing inside. Good Lord! I wish
somebody would suppress me for a year or two. What a lot there
would be when I took the cork out again. We dissipate too much,
Sylvia, both you and I."
She gave a little grunt, which, from his knowledge of her
inarticulate expressions, he took to mean dissent.
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"I suppose you mean we don't," he remarked.
"Yes. How much one dissipates is determined for one just as is the
shape of your nose or the colour of your eyes. By the way, I fell
madly in love with that cousin of Michael's who came with him to-
night. He's the most attractive creature I ever saw in my life.
Of course, he's too beautiful: no boy ought to be as beautiful as
that."
"You flirted with him," remarked Hermann. "Mike will probably
murder him on the way home."
Sylvia moved her feet a little farther from the blaze.
"Funny?" she asked.
Instantly Falbe knew that her mind was occupied with exactly the
same question as his.
"No, not funny at all," he said. "Quite serious. Do you want to
talk about it or not?"
She gave a little groan.
"No, I don't want to, but I've got to," she said. "Aunt Barbara--
we became Sylvia and Aunt Barbara an hour or two ago, and she's a
dear--Aunt Barbara has been talking to me about it already."
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"And what did Aunt Barbara say?"
"Just what you are going to," said Sylvia; "namely, that I had
better make up my mind what I mean to say when Michael says what he
means to say."
She shifted round so as to face her brother as he stood in front of
the fire, and pulled his trouser-leg more neatly over the top of
his shoe.
"But what's to happen if I can't make up my mind?" she said. "I
needn't tell you how much I like Michael; I believe I like him as
much as I possibly can. But I don't know if that is enough.
Hermann, is it enough? You ought to know. There's no use in you
unless you know about me."
She put out her arm, and clasped his two legs in the crook of her
elbow. That expressed their attitude, what they were to each
other, as absolutely as any physical demonstration allowed. Had
there not been the difference of sex which severed them she could
never have got the sense of support that this physical contact gave
her; had there not been her sisterhood to chaperon her, so to
speak, she could never have been so at ease with a man. The two
were lover-like, without the physical apexes and limitations that
physical love must always bring with it. The complement of sex
that brought them so close annihilated the very existence of sex.
They loved as only brother and sister can love, without trouble.
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96
The closer contact of his fire-warmed trousers to the calf of his
leg made Hermann step out of her encircling arm without any
question of hurting her feelings.
"I won't be burned," he said. "Sorry, but I won't be burned. It
seems to me, Sylvia, that you ought to like Michael a little more
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and a little less."
"It's no use saying what I ought to do," she said. "The idea of
what I 'ought' doesn't come in. I like him just as much as I like
him, neither more nor less."
He clawed some more cushions together, and sat down on the floor by
her. She raised herself a little and rested her body against his
folded knees.
"What's the trouble, Sylvia?" he said.
"Just what I've been trying to tell you."
"Be more concrete, then. You're definite enough when you sing."
She sighed and gave a little melancholy laugh.
"That's just it," she said. "People like you and me, and Michael,
too, for that matter, are most entirely ourselves when we are at
our music. When Michael plays for me I can sing my soul at him.
While he and I are in music, if you understand--and of course you
do--we belong to each other. Do you know, Hermann, he finds me
when I'm singing, without the slightest effort, and even you, as
you have so often told me, have to search and be on the lookout.
And then the song is over, and, as somebody says, 'When the feast
is finished and the lamps expire,' then--well, the lamps expire,
and he isn't me any longer, but Michael, with the--the ugly face,
and--oh, isn't it horrible of me--the long arms and the little
stumpy legs--if only he was rather different in things that don't
matter, that CAN'T matter! But--but, Hermann, if only Michael was
rather like you, and you like Michael, I should love you exactly as
much as ever, and I should love Michael, too."
She was leaning forward, and with both hands was very carefully
tying and untying one of Hermann's shoelaces.
"Oh, thank goodness there is somebody in the world to whom I can
say just whatever I feel, and know he understands," she said. "And
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I know this, too--and follow me here, Hermann--I know that all that
doesn't really matter; I am sure it doesn't. I like Michael far
too well to let it matter. But there are other things which I
don't see my way through, and they are much more real--"
She was silent again, so long that Hermann reached out for a
cigarette, lit it, and threw away the match before she spoke.
"There is Michael's position," she said. "When Michael asks me if
I will have him, as we both know he is going to do, I shall have to
make conditions. I won't give up my career. I must go on working--
MICHAEL
97
in other words, singing--whether I marry him or not. I don't call
it singing, in my sense of the word, to sing 'The Banks of Allan
Water' to Michael and his father and mother at Ashbridge, any more
than it is being a politician to read the morning papers and argue
about the Irish question with you. To have a career in politics
means that you must be a member of Parliament--I daresay the House
of Lords would do--and make speeches and stand the racket. In the
same way, to be a singer doesn't mean to sing after dinner or to go
squawking anyhow in a workhouse, but it means to get up on a
platform before critical people, and if you don't do your very best
be damned by them. If I marry Michael I must go on singing as a
professional singer, and not become an amateur--the Viscountess
Comber, who sings so charmingly. I refuse to sing charmingly; I
will either sing properly or not at all. And I couldn't not sing.
I shall have to continue being Miss Falbe, so to speak."
"You say you insist on it," said Hermann; "but whether you did or
not, there is nothing more certain than that Michael would."
"I am sure he would. But by so doing he would certainly quarrel
irrevocably with his people. Even Aunt Barbara, who, after all, is
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very liberally minded, sees that. They can none of them, not even
she, who are born to a certain tradition imagine that there are
other traditions quite as stiff-necked. Michael, it is true, was
born to one tradition, but he has got the other, as he has shown
very clearly by refusing to disobey it. He will certainly, as you
say, insist on my endorsing the resolution he has made for himself.
What it comes to is this, that I can't marry him without his
father's complete consent to all that I have told you. I can't
have my career disregarded, covered up with awkward silences,
alluded to as a painful subject; and, as I say, even Aunt Barbara
seemed to take it for granted that if I became Lady Comber I should
cease to be Miss Falbe. Well, there she's wrong, my dear; I shall
continue to be Miss Falbe whether I'm Lady Comber, or Lady
Ashbridge, or the Duchess of anything you please. And--here the
difficulty really comes in--they must all see how right I am.
Difficulty, did I say? It's more like an impossibility."
Hermann threw the end of his cigarette into the ashes of the dying
fire.
"It's clear, then," he said, "you have made up your mind not to
marry him."
She shook her head.
"Oh, Hermann, you fail me," she said. "If I had made up my mind
not to I shouldn't have kept you up an hour talking about it."
He stretched his hands out towards the embers already coated with
grey ash.
"Then it's like that with you," he said, pointing. "If there is
the fire in you, it is covered up with ashes."
She did not reply for a moment.
MICHAEL
98
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"I think you've hit it there," she said. "I believe there is the
fire; when, as I said, he plays for me I know there is. But the
ashes? What are they? And who shall disperse them for me?"
She stood up swiftly, drawing herself to her full height and
stretching her arms out.
"There's something bigger than we know coming," she said. "Whether
it's storm or sunshine I have no idea. But there will be something
that shall utterly sever Michael and me or utterly unite us."
"Do you care which it is?" he asked.
"Yes, I care," said she.
He held out his hands to her, and she pulled him up to his feet.
"What are you going to say, then, when he asks you?" he said.
"Tell him he must wait."
He went round the room putting out the electric lamps and opening
the big skylight in the roof. There was a curtain in front of
this, which he pulled aside, and from the frosty cloudless heavens
the starshine of a thousand constellations filtered down.
"That's a lot to ask of any man," he said. "If you care, you
care."
"And if you were a girl you would know exactly what I mean," she
said. "They may know they care, but, unless they are marrying for
perfectly different reasons, they have to feel to the end of their
fingers that they care before they can say 'Yes.'"
He opened the door for her to pass out, and they walked up the
passage together arm-in-arm.
"Well, perhaps Michael won't ask you," he said, "in which case all
bother will be saved, and we shall have sat up talking till--
Sylvia, did you know it is nearly three--sat up talking for
nothing!"
Sylvia considered this.
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"Fiddlesticks!" she said.
And Hermann was inclined to agree with her.
This view of the case found confirmation next day, for Michael,
after his music lesson, lingered so firmly and determinedly when
the three chatted together over the fire that in the end Hermann
found nothing to do but to leave them together. Sylvia had given
him no sign as to whether she wished him to absent himself or not,
and he concluded, since she did not put an end to things by going
MICHAEL
99
away herself, that she intended Michael to have his say.
The latter rose as the door closed behind Hermann, and came and
stood in front of her. And at the moment Sylvia could notice
nothing of him except his heaviness, his plainness, all the things
that she had told herself before did not really matter. Now her
sensation contradicted that; she was conscious that the ash somehow
had vastly accumulated over her fire, that all her affection and
regard for him were suddenly eclipsed. This was a complete
surprise to her; for the moment she found Michael's presence and
his proximity to her simply distasteful.
"I thought Hermann was never going," he said.
For a second or two she did not reply; it was clearly no use to
continue the ordinary banter of conversation, to suggest that as
the room was Hermann's he might conceivably be conceded the right
to stop there if he chose. There was no transition possible
between the affairs of every day and the affair for which Michael
had stopped to speak. She gave up all attempt to make one;
instead, she just helped him.
"What is it, Michael?" she asked.
Then to her, at any rate, Michael's face completely changed. There
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burned in it all of a sudden the full glow of that of which she had
only seen glimpses.
"You know," he said.
His shyness, his awkwardness, had all vanished; the time had come
for him to offer to her all that he had to offer, and he did it
with the charm of perfect manliness and simplicity.
"Whether you can accept me or not," he said, "I have just to tell
you that I am entirely yours. Is there any chance for me, Sylvia?"
He stood quite still, making no movement towards her. She, on her
side, found all her distaste of him suddenly vanished in the mere
solemnity of the occasion. His very quietness told her better than
any protestations could have done of the quality of what he
offered, and that quality vastly transcended all that she had known
or guessed of him.
"I don't know, Michael," she said at length.
She came a step forward, and without any sense of embarrassment
found that she, without conscious intention, had put her hands on
his shoulders. The moment that was done she was conscious of the
impulse that made her do it. It expressed what she felt.
"Yes, I feel like that to you," she said. "You're a dear. I
expect you know how fond I am of you, and if you don't I assure you
of it now. But I have got to give you more than that."
Michael looked up at her.
MICHAEL
100
"Yes, Sylvia," he said, "much more than that."
A few minutes ago only she had not liked him at all; now she liked
him immensely.
"But how, Michael?" she asked. "How can I find it?"
"Oh, it's I who have got to find it for you," he said. "That is to
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say, if you want it to be found. Do you?"
She looked at him gravely, without the tremor of a smile in her
eyes.
"What does that mean exactly?" she said.
"It is very simple. Do you want to love me?"
She did not move her hands; they still rested on his shoulders like
things at ease, like things at home.
"Yes, I suppose I want to," she said.
"And is that the most you can do for me at present?" he asked.
That reached her again; all the time the plain words, the plain
face, the quiet of him stabbed her with daggers of which he had no
idea. She was dismayed at the recollection of her talk with her
brother the evening before, of the ease and certitude with which
she had laid down her conditions, of not giving up her career, of
remaining the famous Miss Falbe, of refusing to take a dishonoured
place in the sacred circle of the Combers. Now, when she was face
to face with his love, so ineloquently expressed, so radically a
part of him, she knew that there was nothing in the world, external
to him and her, that could enter into their reckonings; but into
their reckonings there had not entered the one thing essential.
She gave him sympathy, liking, friendliness, but she did not want
him with her blood. And though it was not humanly possible that
she could want him with more than that, it was not possible that
she could take him with less.
"Yes, that is the most I can do for you at present," she said.
Still quite quietly he moved away from her, so that he stood free
of her hands.
"I have been constantly here all these last months," he said. "Now
that you know what I have told you, do you want not to see me?"
That stabbed her again.
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"Have I implied that?" she asked.
"Not directly. But I can easily understand its being a bore to
you. I don't want to bore you. That would be a very stupid way of
trying to make you care for me. As I said, that is my job. I
MICHAEL
101
haven't accomplished it as yet. But I mean to. I only ask you for
a hint."
She understood her own feeling better than he. She understood at
least that she was dealing with things that were necessarily
incalculable.
"I can't give you a hint," she said. "I can't make any plans about
it. If you were a woman perhaps you would understand. Love is, or
it isn't. That is all I know about it."
But Michael persisted.
"I only know what you have taught me," he said. "But you must know
that."
In a flash she became aware that it would be impossible for her to
behave to Michael as she had behaved to him for several months
past. She could not any longer put a hand on his shoulder, beat
time with her fingers on his arm, knowing that the physical contact
meant nothing to her, and all--all to him. The rejection of him as
a lover rendered the sisterly attitude impossible. And not only
must she revise her conduct, but she must revise the mental
attitude of which it was the physical counterpart. Up till this
moment she had looked at the situation from her own side only, had
felt that no plans could be made, that the natural thing was to go
on as before, with the intimacy that she liked and the familiarity
that was the obvious expression of it. But now she began to see
the question from his side; she could not go on doing that which
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meant nothing particular to her, if that insouciance meant
something so very particular to him. She realised that if she had
loved him the touch of his hand, the proximity of his face would
have had significance for her, a significance that would have been
intolerable unless there was something mutual and secret between
them. It had seemed so easy, in anticipation, to tell him that he
must wait, so simple for him just--well, just to wait until she
could make up her mind. She believed, as she had told her brother,
that she cared for Michael, or as she had told him that she wanted
to--the two were to the girl's mind identical, though expressed to
each in the only terms that were possible--but until she came face
to face with the picture of the future, that to her wore the same
outline and colour as the past, she had not known the impossibility
of such a presentment. The desire of the lover on Michael's part
rendered unthinkable the sisterly attitude on hers. That her
instinct told her, but her reason revolted against it.
"Can't we go on as we were, Michael?" she said.
He looked at her incredulously.
"Oh, no, of course not that," he said.
She moved a step towards him.
"I can't think of you in any other way," she said, as if making an
appeal.
MICHAEL
102
He stood absolutely unresponsive. Something within him longed that
she should advance a step more, that he should again have the touch
of her hands on his shoulders, but another instinct stronger than
that made him revoke his desire, and if she had moved again he
would certainly have fallen back before her.
"It may seem ridiculous to you," he said, "since you do not care.
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But I can't do that. Does that seem absurd to you I? I am afraid
it does; but that is because you don't understand. By all means
let us be what they call excellent friends. But there are certain
little things which seem nothing to you, and they mean so much to
me. I can't explain; it's just the brotherly relation which I
can't stand. It's no use suggesting that we should be as we were
before--"
She understood well enough for his purposes.
"I see," she said.
Michael paused for a moment.
"I think I'll be going now," he said. "I am off to Ashbridge in
two days. Give Hermann my love, and a jolly Christmas to you both.
I'll let you know when I am back in town."
She had no reply to this; she saw its justice, and acquiesced.
"Good-bye, then," said Michael.
He walked home from Chelsea in that utterly blank and unfeeling
consciousness which almost invariably is the sequel of any event
that brings with it a change of attitude towards life generally.
Not for a moment did he tell himself that he had been awakened from
a dream, or abandon his conviction that his dream was to be made
real. The rare, quiet determination that had made him give up his
stereotyped mode of life in the summer and take to music was still
completely his, and, if anything, it had been reinforced by
Sylvia's emphatic statement that "she wanted to care." Only her
imagining that their old relations could go on showed him how far
she was from knowing what "to care" meant. At first without
knowing it, but with a gradually increasing keenness of
consciousness, he had become aware that this sisterly attitude of
hers towards him had meant so infinitely much, because he had taken
it to be the prelude to something more. Now he saw that it was, so
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to speak, a piece complete in itself. It bore no relation to what
he had imagined it would lead into. No curtain went up when the
prelude was over; the curtain remained inexorably hanging there,
not acknowledging the prelude at all. Not for a moment did he
accuse her of encouraging him to have thought so; she had but given
him a frankness of comradeship that meant to her exactly what it
expressed. But he had thought otherwise; he had imagined that it
would grow towards a culmination. All that (and here was the
change that made his mind blank and unfeeling) had to be cut away,
and with it all the budding branches that his imagination had
MICHAEL
103
pictured as springing from it. He could not be comrade to her as
he was to her brother--the inexorable demands of sex forbade it.
He went briskly enough through the clean, dry streets. The frost
of last night had held throughout the morning, and the sunlight
sparkled with a rare and seasonable brightness of a traditional
Christmas weather. Hecatombs of turkeys hung in the poulterers'
windows, among sprigs of holly, and shops were bright with
children's toys. The briskness of the day had flushed the colour
into the faces of the passengers in the street, and the festive air
of the imminent holiday was abroad. All this Michael noticed with
a sense of detachment; what had happened had caused a veil to fall
between himself and external things; it was as if he was sealed
into some glass cage, and had no contact with what passed round
him. This lasted throughout his walk, and when he let himself into
his flat it was with the same sense of alienation that he found his
cousin Francis gracefully reclining on the sofa that he had pulled
up in front of the fire.
Francis was inclined to be querulous.
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"I was just wondering whether I should give you up," he said. "The
hour that you named for lunch was half-past one. And I have almost
forgotten what your clock sounded like when it struck two."
This also seemed to matter very little.
"Did I ask you to lunch?" he said. "I really quite forgot; I can't
even remember doing it now."
"But there will be lunch?" asked Francis rather anxiously.
"Of course. It'll be ready in ten minutes."
Michael came and stood in front of the fire, and looked with a
sudden spasm of envy on the handsome boy who lay there. If he
himself had been anything like that--
"I was distinctly chippy this morning," remarked Francis, "and so I
didn't so much mind waiting for lunch. I attribute it to too much
beer and bacon last night at your friend's house. I enjoyed it--I
mean the evening, and for that matter the bacon--at the time. It
really was extremely pleasant."
He yawned largely and openly.
"I had no idea you could frolic like that, Mike," he said. "It was
quite a new light on your character. How did you learn to do it?
It's quite a new accomplishment."
Here again the veil was drawn. Was it last night only that Falbe
had played the Variations, and that they had acted charades?
Francis proceeded in bland unconsciousness.
"I didn't know Germans could be so jolly," he continued. "As a
rule I don't like Germans. When they try to be jolly they
MICHAEL
104
generally only succeed in being top-heavy. But, of course, your
friend is half-English. Can't he play, too? And to think of your
having written those ripping tunes. His sister, too--no wonder we
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haven't seen much of you, Mike, if that's where you've been
spending your time. She's rather like the new girl at the Gaiety,
but handsomer. I like big girls, don't you? Oh, I forgot, you
don't like girls much, anyhow. But are you learning your mistake,
Mike? You looked last night as if you were getting more sensible."
Michael moved away impatiently.
"Oh, shut it, Francis," he observed.
Francis raised himself on his elbow.
"Why, what's up?" he asked. "Won't she turn a favourable eye?"
Michael wheeled round savagely.
"Please remember you are talking about a lady, and not a Gaiety
lady," he remarked.
This brought Francis to his feet.
"Sorry," he said. "I was only indulging in badinage until lunch
was ready."
Michael could not make up his mind to tell his cousin what had
happened; but he was aware of having spoken more strongly than the
situation, as Francis knew of it, justified.
"Let's have lunch, then," he said. "We shall be better after
lunch, as one's nurse used to say. And are you coming to
Ashbridge, Francis?"
"Yes; I've been talking to Aunt Bar about it this morning. We're
both coming; the family is going to rally round you, Mike, and
defend you from Uncle Robert. There's sure to be some duck
shooting, too, isn't there?"
This was a considerable relief to Michael.
"Oh, that's ripping," he said. "You and Aunt Barbara always make
me feel that there's a good deal of amusement to be extracted from
the world."
"To be sure there is. Isn't that what the world is for? Lunch and
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amusement, and dinner and amusement. Aunt Bar told me she dined
with you the other night, and had a quantity of amusement as well
as an excellent dinner. She hinted--"
"Oh, Aunt Barbara's always hinting," said Michael.
"
I know. After all, everything that isn't hints is obvious, and so
there's nothing to say about it. Tell me more about the Falbes,
Mike. Will they let me go there again, do you think? Was I
MICHAEL
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popular? Don't tell me if I wasn't."
Michael smiled at this egoism that could not help being charming.
"Would you care if you weren't?" he asked.
"Very much. One naturally wants to please delightful people. And
I think they are both delightful. Especially the girl; but then
she starts with the tremendous advantage of being--of being a girl.
I believe you are in love with her, Mike, just as I am. It's that
which makes you so grumpy. But then you never do fall in love.
It's a pity; you miss a lot of jolly trouble."
Michael felt a sudden overwhelming desire to make Francis stop this
maddening twaddle; also the events of the morning were beginning to
take on an air of reality, and as this grew he felt the need of
sympathy of some kind. Francis might not be able to give him
anything that was of any use, but it would do no harm to see if his
cousin's buoyant unconscious philosophy, which made life so
exciting and pleasant a thing to him, would in any way help.
Besides, he must stop this light banter, which was like drawing
plaster off a sore and unhealed wound.
"You're quite right," he said. "I am in love with her.
Furthermore, I asked her to marry me this morning."
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This certainly had an effect.
"Good Lord!" said Francis. "And do you mean to say she refused
you?"
"She didn't accept me," said Michael. "We--we adjourned."
"But why on earth didn't she take you?" asked Francis.
All Michael's old sensitiveness, his self-consciousness of his
plainness, his awkwardness, his big hands, his short legs, came
back to him.
"I should think you could see well enough if you look at me," he
said, "without my telling you."
"Oh, that silly old rot," said Francis cheerfully. "I thought you
had forgotten all about it."
"I almost had--in fact I quite had until this morning," said
Michael. "If I had remembered it I shouldn't have asked her."
He corrected himself.
"No, I don't think that's true," he said. "I should have asked
her, anyhow; but I should have been prepared for her not to take
me. As a matter of fact, I wasn't."
Francis turned sideways to the table, throwing one leg over the
other.
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"That's nonsense," he said. "It doesn't matter whether a man's
ugly or not."
"It doesn't as long as he is not," remarked Michael grimly.
"It doesn't matter much in any case. We're all ugly compared to
girls; and why ever they should consent to marry any of us awful
hairy things, smelling of smoke and drink, is more than I can make
out; but, as a matter of fact, they do. They don't mind what we
look like; what they care about is whether we want them. Of
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course, there are exceptions--"
"You see one," said Michael.
"No, I don't. Good Lord, you've only asked her once. You've got
to make yourself felt. You're not intending to give up, are you?"
"I couldn't give up."
"Well then, just hold on. She likes you, doesn't she?"
"Certainly," said Michael, without hesitation. "But that's a long
way from the other thing."
"It's on the same road."
Michael got up.
"It may be," he said, "but it strikes me it's round the corner.
You can't even see one from the other."
"Possibly not. But you never know how near the corner really is.
Go for her, Mike, full speed ahead."
"But how?"
"Oh, there are hundreds of ways. I'm not sure that one of the best
isn't to keep away for a bit. Even if she doesn't want you just
now, when you are there, she may get to want you when you aren't.
I don't think I should go on the mournful Byronic plan if I were
you; I don't think it would suit your style; you're too heavily
built to stand leaning against the chimney-piece, gazing at her and
dishevelling your hair."
Michael could not help laughing.
"Oh, for God's sake, don't make a joke of it," he said.
"Why not? It isn't a tragedy yet. It won't be a tragedy till she
marries somebody else, or definitely says no. And until a thing is
proved to be tragic, the best way to deal with it is to treat it
like a comedy which is going to end well. It's only the second act
now, you see, when everything gets into a mess. By the merciful
decrees of Providence, you see, girls on the whole want us as much
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as we want them. That's what makes it all so jolly."
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107
Michael went down next day to Ashbridge, where Aunt Barbara and
Francis were to follow the day after, and found, after the freedom
and interests of the last six months, that the pompous formal life
was more intolerable than ever. He was clearly in disgrace still,
as was made quite clear to him by his father's icy and awful
politeness when it was necessary to speak to him, and by his utter
unconsciousness of his presence when it was not. This he had
expected. Christmas had ushered in a truce in which no guns were
discharged, but remained sighted and pointed, ready to fire.
But though there was no change in his father, his mother seemed to
Michael to be curiously altered; her mind, which, as has been
already noticed, was usually in a stunned condition, seemed to have
awakened like a child from its sleep, and to have begun vaguely
crying in an inarticulate discomfort. It was true that Petsy was
no more, having succumbed to a bilious attack of unusual severity,
but a second Petsy had already taken her place, and Lady Ashbridge
sat with him--it was a gentleman Petsy this time--in her lap as
before, and occasionally shed a tear or two over Petsy II. in
memory of Petsy I. But this did not seem to account for the
wakening up of her mind and emotions into this state of depression
and anxiety. It was as if all her life she had been quietly dozing
in the sun, and that the place where she sat had passed into the
shade, and she had awoke cold and shivering from a bitter wind.
She had become far more talkative, and though she had by no means
abandoned her habit of upsetting any conversation by the extreme
obviousness of her remarks, she asked many more questions, and, as
Michael noticed, often repeated a question to which she had
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received an answer only a few minutes before. During dinner
Michael constantly found her looking at him in a shy and eager
manner, removing her gaze when she found it was observed, and when,
later, after a silent cigarette with his father in the smoking-
room, during which Lord Ashbridge, with some ostentation, studied
an Army List, Michael went to his bedroom, he was utterly
astonished, when he gave a "Come in" to a tapping at his door, to
see his mother enter. Her maid was standing behind her holding the
inevitable Petsy, and she herself hovered hesitatingly in the
doorway.
"I heard you come up, Michael," she said, "and I wondered if it
would annoy you if I came in to have a little talk with you. But I
won't come in if it would annoy you. I only thought I should like
a little chat with you, quietly, secure from interruptions."
Michael instantly got up from the chair in front of his fire, in
which he had already begun to see images of Sylvia. This intrusion
of his mother's was a thing utterly unprecedented, and somehow he
at once connected its innovation with the strange manner he had
remarked already. But there was complete cordiality in his
welcome, and he wheeled up a chair for her.
"But by all means come in, mother," he said. "I was not going to
bed yet."
MICHAEL
108
Lady Ashbridge looked round for her maid.
"And will Petsy not annoy you if he sits quietly on my knee?" she
asked.
"Of course not."
Lady Ashbridge took the dog.
"There, that is nice," she said. "I told them to see you had a
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good fire on this cold night. Has it been very cold in London?"
This question had already been asked and answered twice, now for
the third time Michael admitted the severity of the weather.
"I hope you wrap up well," she said. "I should be sorry if you
caught cold, and so, I am sure, your father would be. I wish you
could make up your mind not to vex him any more, but go back into
the Guards."
"I'm afraid that's impossible, mother," he said.
"Well, if it's impossible there is no use in saying anything more
about it. But it vexed him very much. He is still vexed with you.
I wish he was not vexed. It is a sad thing when father and son
fall out. But you do wrap up, I hope, in the cold weather?"
Michael felt a sudden pang of anxiety and alarm. Each separate
thing that his mother said was sensible enough, but in the sum they
were nonsense.
"You have been in London since September," she went on. "That is a
long time to be in London. Tell me about your life there. Do you
work hard? Not too hard, I hope?"
"No! hard enough to keep me busy," he said.
"Tell me about it all. I am afraid I have not been a very good
mother to you; I have not entered into your life enough. I want to
do so now. But I don't think you ever wanted to confide in me. It
is sad when sons don't confide in their mothers. But I daresay it
was my fault, and now I know so little about you."
She paused a moment, stroking her dog's ears, which twitched under
her touch.
"I hope you are happy, Michael," she said. "I don't think I am so
happy as I used to be. But don't tell your father; I feel sure he
does not notice it, and it would vex him. But I want you to be
happy; you used not to be when you were little; you were always
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sensitive and queer. But you do seem happier now, and that's a
good thing."
Here again this was all sensible, when taken in bits, but its
aspect was different when considered together. She looked at
Michael anxiously a moment, and then drew her chair closer to him,
MICHAEL
109
laying her thin, veined hand, sparkling with many rings, on his
knee.
"But it wasn't I who made you happier," she said, "and that's so
dreadful. I never made anybody happy. Your father always made
himself happy, and he liked being himself, but I suspect you
haven't liked being yourself, poor Michael. But now that you're
living the life you chose, which vexes your father, is it better
with you?"
The shyness had gone from the gaze that he had seen her direct at
him at dinner, which fugitively fluttered away when she saw that it
was observed, and now that it was bent so unwaveringly on him he
saw shining through it what he had never seen before, namely, the
mother-love which he had missed all his life. Now, for the first
time, he saw it; recognising it, as by divination, when, with ray
serene and untroubled, it burst through the mists that seemed to
hang about his mother's mind. Before, noticing her change of
manner, her restless questions, he had been vaguely alarmed, and as
they went on the alarm had become more pronounced; but at this
moment, when there shone forth the mother-instinct which had never
come out or blossomed in her life, but had been overlaid completely
with routine and conventionality, rendering it too indolent to put
forth petals, Michael had no thought but for that which she had
never given him yet, and which, now it began to expand before him,
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he knew he had missed all his life.
She took up his big hand that lay on his knee and began timidly
stroking it.
"Since you have been away," she said, "and since your father has
been vexed with you, I have begun to see how lonely you must have
been. What taught me that, I am afraid, was only that I have begun
to feel lonely, too. Nobody wants me; even Petsy, when she died,
didn't want me to be near her, and then it began to strike me that
perhaps you might want me. There was no one else, and who should
want me if my son did not? I never gave you the chance before, God
forgive me, and now perhaps it is too late. You have learned to do
without me."
That was bitterly true; the truth of it stabbed Michael. On his
side, as he knew, he had made no effort either, or if he had they
had been but childish efforts, easily repulsed. He had not
troubled about it, and if she was to blame, the blame was his also.
She had been slow to show the mother-instinct, but he had been just
as wanting in the tenderness of the son.
He was profoundly touched by this humble timidity, by the
sincerity, vague but unquestionable, that lay behind it.
"It's never too late, is it?" he said, bending down and kissing the
thin white hands that held his. "We are in time, after all, aren't
we?"
She gave a little shiver.
MICHAEL
110
"Oh, don't kiss my hands, Michael," she said. "It hurts me that
you should do that. But it is sweet of you to say that I am not
too late, after all. Michael, may I just take you in my arms--may
I?"
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He half rose.
"Oh, mother, how can you ask?" he said.
"Then let me do it. No, my darling, don't move. Just sit still as
you are, and let me just get my arms about you, and put my head on
your shoulder, and hold me close like that for a moment, so that I
can realise that I am not too late."
She got up, and, leaning over him, held him so for a moment,
pressing her cheek close to his, and kissing him on the eyes and on
the mouth.
"Ah, that is nice," she said. "It makes my loneliness fall away
from me. I am not quite alone any more. And now, if you are not
tired will you let me talk to you a little more, and learn a little
more about you?"
She pulled her chair again nearer him, so that sitting there she
could clasp his arm.
"I want your happiness, dear," she said, "but there is so little
now that I can do to secure it. I must put that into other hands.
You are twenty-five, Michael; you are old enough to get married.
All Combers marry when they are twenty-five, don't they? Isn't
there some girl you would like to be yours? But you must love her,
you know, you must want her, you mustn't be able to do without her.
It won't do to marry just because you are twenty-five."
It would no more have entered into Michael's head this morning to
tell to his mother about Sylvia than to have discussed counterpoint
with her. But then this morning he had not been really aware that
he had a mother. But to tell her now was not unthinkable, but
inevitable.
"Yes, there is a girl whom I can't do without," he said.
Lady Ashbridge's face lit up.
"Ah, tell me about her--tell me about her," she said. "You want
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her, you can't do without her; that is the right wife for you."
Michael caught at his mother's hand as it stroked his sleeve.
"But she is not sure that she can do with me," he said.
Her face was not dimmed at this.
"Oh, you may be sure she doesn't know her own mind," she said.
"Girls so often don't. You must not be down-hearted about it. Who
is she? Tell me about her."
MICHAEL
111
"
She's the sister of my great friend, Hermann Falbe," he said, "who
teaches me music."
This time the gladness faded from her.
"Oh, my dear, it will vex your father again," she said, "that you
should want to marry the sister of a music-teacher. It will never
do to vex him again. Is she not a lady?"
Michael laughed.
"But certainly she is," he said. "Her father was German, her
mother was a Tracy, just as well-born as you or I."
"How odd, then, that her brother should have taken to giving music
lessons. That does not sound good. Perhaps they are poor, and
certainly there is no disgrace in being poor. And what is her
name?"
"Sylvia," said Michael. "You have probably heard of her; she is
the Miss Falbe who made such a sensation in London last season by
her singing."
The old outlook, the old traditions were beginning to come to the
surface again in poor Lady Ashbridge's mind.
"Oh, my dear!" she said. "A singer! That would vex your father
terribly. Fancy the daughter of a Miss Tracy becoming a singer.
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And yet you want her--that seems to me to matter most of all."
Then came a step at the door; it opened an inch or two, and Michael
heard his father's voice.
"Is your mother with you, Michael?" he asked.
At that Lady Ashbridge got up. For one second she clung to her
son, and then, disengaging herself, froze up like the sudden
congealment of a spring.
"Yes, Robert," she said. "I was having a little talk to Michael."
"May I come in?"
"It's our secret," she whispered to Michael.
"Yes, come in, father," he said.
Lord Ashbridge stood towering in the doorway.
"Come, my dear," he said, not unkindly, "it's time for you to go to
bed."
She had become the mask of herself again.
"Yes, Robert," she said. "I suppose it must be late. I will come.
MICHAEL
112
Oh, there's Petsy. Will you ring, Michael? then Fedden will come
and take him to bed. He sleeps with Fedden."
CHAPTER IX
Michael, in desperate conversational efforts next morning at
breakfast, mentioned the fact that the German Emperor had engaged
him in a substantial talk at Munich, and had recommended him to
pass the winter at Berlin. It was immediately obvious that he rose
in his father's estimation, for, though no doubt primarily the fact
that Michael was his son was the cause of this interest, it gave
Michael a sort of testimonial also to his respectability. If the
Emperor had thought that his taking up a musical career was
indelibly disgraceful--as Lord Ashbridge himself had done--he would
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certainly not have made himself so agreeable. On anyone of Lord
Ashbridge's essential and deep-rooted snobbishness this could not
fail to make a certain effect; his chilly politeness to Michael
sensibly thawed; you might almost have detected a certain
cordiality in his desire to learn as much as possible of this
gratifying occurrence.
"And you mean to go to Berlin?" he asked.
"I'm afraid I shan't be able to," said Michael; "my master is in
London."
"I should be inclined to reconsider that, Michael," said the
father. "The Emperor knows what he is talking about on the subject
of music."
Lady Ashbridge looked up from the breakfast she was giving Petsy
II. His dietary was rather less rich than that of the defunct, and
she was afraid sometimes that his food was not nourishing enough.
"I remember the concert we had here," she said. "We had the 'Song
to Aegir' twice."
Lord Ashbridge gave her a quick glance. Michael felt he would not
have noticed it the evening before.
"Your memory is very good, my dear," he said with encouragement.
"And then we had a torchlight procession," she remarked.
"Quite so. You remember it perfectly. And about his visit here,
Michael. Did he talk about that?"
"Yes, very warmly; also about our international relations."
Lord Ashbridge gave a little giggle.
"I must tell Barbara that," he said. "She has become a sort of
Cassandra, since she became a diplomatist, and sits on her tripod
and prophesies woe."
MICHAEL
113
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"She asked me about it," said Michael. "I don't think she believes
in his sincerity."
He giggled again.
"That's because I didn't ask her down for his visit," he said.
He rose.
"And what are you going to do, my dear?" he said to his wife.
She looked across to Michael.
"Perhaps Michael will come for a stroll with me," she said.
"No doubt he will. I shall have a round of golf, I think, on this
fine morning. I should like to have a word with you, Michael, when
you've finished your breakfast."
The moment he had gone her whole manner changed: it was suffused
with the glow that had lit her last night.
"And we shall have another talk, dear?" she said. "It was tiresome
being interrupted last night. But your father was better pleased
with you this morning."
Michael's understanding of the situation grew clearer. Whatever
was the change in his mother, whatever, perhaps, it portended, it
was certainly accompanied by two symptoms, the one the late dawning
of mother-love for himself, the other a certain fear of her
husband; for all her married life she had been completely dominated
by him, and had lived but in a twilight of her own; now into that
twilight was beginning to steal a dread of him. His pleasure or
his vexation had begun to affect her emotionally, instead of being
as before, merely recorded in her mind, as she might have recorded
an object quite exterior to herself, and seen out of the window.
Now it was in the room with her. Even as Michael left her to speak
with him, the consciousness of him rose again in her, making her
face anxious.
"And you'll try not to vex him, won't you?" she said.
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His father was in the smoking-room, standing enormously in front of
the fire, and for the first time the sense of his colossal fatuity
struck Michael.
"There are several things I want to tell you about," he said.
"Your career, first of all. I take it that you have no intention
of deferring to my wishes on the subject."
"No, father, I am afraid not," said Michael.
"I want you to understand, then, that, though I shall not speak to
you again about it, my wishes are no less strong than they were.
MICHAEL
114
It is something to me to know that a man whom I respect so much as
the Emperor doesn't feel as I do about it, but that doesn't alter
my view."
"I understand," said Michael.
"The next is about your mother," he said. "Do you notice any
change in her?"
"Yes," said Michael.
"Can you describe it at all?"
Michael hesitated.
"She shows quite a new affection for myself," he said. "She came
and talked to me last night in a way she had never done before."
The irritation which Michael's mere presence produced on his father
was beginning to make itself felt. The fact that Michael was squat
and long-armed and ugly had always a side-blow to deal at Lord
Ashbridge in the reminder that he was his father. He tried to
disregard this--he tried to bring his mind into an impartial
attitude, without seeing for a moment the bitter irony of
considering impartiality the ideal quality when dealing with his
son. He tried to be fair, and Michael was perfectly conscious of
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the effort it cost him.
"I had noticed something of the sort," he said. "Your mother was
always asking after you. You have not been writing very regularly,
Michael. We know little about your life."
"I have written to my mother every week," said Michael.
The magical effects of the Emperor's interest were dying out. Lord
Ashbridge became more keenly aware of the disappointment that
Michael was to him.
"I have not been so fortunate, then," he said.
Michael remembered his mother's anxious face, but he could not let
this pass.
"No, sir," he said, "but you never answered any of my letters. I
thought it quite probable that it displeased you to hear from me."
"I should have expressed my displeasure if I had felt it," said his
father with all the pomposity that was natural to him.
"That had not occurred to me," said Michael. "I am afraid I took
your silence to mean that my letters didn't interest you."
He paused a moment, and his rebellion against the whole of his
father's attitude flared up.
"Besides, I had nothing particular to say," he said. "My life is
MICHAEL
115
passed in the pursuit of which you entirely disapprove."
He felt himself back in boyhood again with this stifling and leaden
atmosphere of authority and disapproval to breathe. He knew that
Francis in his place would have done somehow differently; he could
almost hear Aunt Barbara laughing at the pomposity of the situation
that had suddenly erected itself monstrously in front of him. The
fact that he was Michael Comber vexed his father--there was no
statement of the case so succinctly true.
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Lord Ashbridge moved away towards the window, turning his back on
Michael. Even his back, his homespun Norfolk jacket, his loose
knickerbockers, his stalwart calves expressed disapproval; but when
his father spoke again he realised that he had moved away like
that, and obscured his face for a different reason.
"Have you noticed anything else about your mother?" he asked.
That made Michael understand.
"Yes, father," he said. "I daresay I am wrong about it--"
"Naturally I may not agree with you; but I should like to know what
it is."
"She's afraid of you," said Michael.
Lord Ashbridge continued looking out of the window a little longer,
letting his eyes dwell on his own garden and his own fields, where
towered the leafless elms and the red roofs of the little town
which had given him his own name, and continued to give him so
satisfactory an income. There presented itself to his mind his own
picture, painted and framed and glazed and hung up by himself, the
beneficent nobleman, the conscientious landlord, the essential
vertebra of England's backbone. It was really impossible to impute
blame to such a fine fellow. He turned round into the room again,
braced and refreshed, and saw Michael thus.
"It is quite true what you say," he said, with a certain pride in
his own impartiality. "She has developed an extraordinary timidity
towards me. I have continually noticed that she is nervous and
agitated in my presence--I am quite unable to account for it. In
fact, there is no accounting for it. But I am thinking of going up
to London before long, and making her see some good doctor. A
little tonic, I daresay; though I don't suppose she has taken a
dozen doses of medicine in as many years. I expect she will be
glad to go up, for she will be near you. The one delusion--for it
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is no less than that--is as strange as the other."
He drew himself up to his full magnificent height.
"I do not mean that it is not very natural she should be devoted to
her son," he said with a tremendous air.
What he did mean was therefore uncertain, and again he changed the
subject.
MICHAEL
116
"
There is a third thing," he said. "This concerns you. You are of
the age when we Combers usually marry. I should wish you to marry,
Michael. During this last year your mother has asked half a dozen
girls down here, all of whom she and I consider perfectly suitable,
and no doubt you have met more in London. I should like to know
definitely if you have considered the question, and if you have
not, I ask you to set about it at once."
Michael was suddenly aware that never for a moment had Sylvia been
away from his mind. Even when his mother was talking to him last
night Sylvia had sat at the back, in the inmost place, throned and
secure. And now she stepped forward. Apart from the impossibility
of not acknowledging her, he wished to do it. He wanted to wear
her publicly, though she was not his; he wanted to take his
allegiance oath, though his sovereign heeded not.
"I have considered the question," he said, "and I have quite made
up my mind whom I want to marry. She is Miss Falbe, Miss Sylvia
Falbe, of whom you may have heard as a singer. She is the sister
of my music-master, and I can certainly marry nobody else."
It was not merely defiance of the dreadful old tradition, which
Lord Ashbridge had announced in the manner of Moses stepping down
from Sinai, that prompted this appalling statement of the case; it
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was the joy in the profession of his love. It had to be flung out
like that. Lord Ashbridge looked at him a moment in dead silence.
"I have not the honour of knowing Miss--Miss Falbe, is it?" he
said; "nor shall I have that honour."
Michael got up; there was that in his father's tone that stung him
to fury.
"It is very likely that you will not," he said, "since when I
proposed to her yesterday she did not accept me."
Somehow Lord Ashbridge felt that as an insult to himself. Indeed,
it was a double insult. Michael had proposed to this singer, and
this singer had not instantly clutched him. He gave his dreadful
little treble giggle.
"And I am to bind up your broken heart?" he asked.
Michael drew himself up to his full height. This was an
indiscretion, for it but made his father recognise how short he
was. It brought farce into the tragic situation.
"Oh, by no means," he said. "My heart is not going to break yet.
I don't give up hope."
T
hen, in a flash, he thought of his mother's pale, anxious face,
her desire that he should not vex his father.
"I am sorry," he said, "but that is the case. I wish--I wish you
would try to understand me."
MICHAEL
117
"I find you incomprehensible," said Lord Ashbridge, and left the
room with his high walk and his swinging elbows.
Well, it was done now, and Michael felt that there were no new
vexations to be sprung on his father. It was bound to happen, he
supposed, sooner or later, and he was not sorry that it had
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happened sooner than he expected or intended. Sylvia so held sway
in him that he could not help acknowledging her. His announcement
had broken from him irresistibly, in spite of his mother's
whispered word to him last night, "This is our secret." It could
not be secret when his father spoke like that. . . . And then,
with a flare of illumination he perceived how intensely his father
disliked him. Nothing but sheer basic antipathy could have been
responsible for that miserable retort, "Am I to bind up your broken
heart?" Anger, no doubt, was the immediate cause, but so utterly
ungenerous a rejoinder to Michael's announcement could not have
been conceived, except in a heart that thoroughly and rootedly
disliked him. That he was a continual monument of disappointment
to his father he knew well, but never before had it been quite
plainly shown him how essential an object of dislike he was. And
the grounds of the dislike were now equally plain--his father
disliked him exactly because he was his father. On the other hand,
the last twenty-four hours had shown him that his mother loved him
exactly because he was her son. When these two new and undeniable
facts were put side by side, Michael felt that he was an infinite
gainer.
He went rather drearily to the window. Far off across the field
below the garden he could see Lord Ashbridge walking airily along
on his way to the links, with his head held high, his stick
swinging in his hand, his two retrievers at his heels. No doubt
already the soothing influences of Nature were at work--Nature, of
course, standing for the portion of trees and earth and houses that
belonged to him--and were expunging the depressing reflection that
his wife and only son inspired in him. And, indeed, such was
actually the case: Lord Ashbridge, in his amazing fatuity, could
not long continue being himself without being cheered and
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invigorated by that fact, and though when he set out his big white
hands were positively trembling with passion, he carried his balsam
always with him. But he had registered to himself, even as Michael
had registered, the fact that he found his son a most intolerable
person. And what vexed him most of all, what made him clang the
gate at the end of the field so violently that it hit one of his
retrievers shrewdly on the nose, was the sense of his own
impotence. He knew perfectly well that in point of view of
determination (that quality which in himself was firmness, and in
those who opposed him obstinacy) Michael was his match. And the
annoying thing was that, as his wife had once told him, Michael
undoubtedly inherited that quality from him. It was as inalienable
as the estates of which he had threatened to deprive his son, and
which, as he knew quite well, were absolutely entailed. Michael,
in this regard, seemed no better than a common but successful
thief. He had annexed his father's firmness, and at his death
would certainly annex all his pictures and trees and acres and the
red roofs of Ashbridge.
MICHAEL
118
Michael saw the gate so imperially slammed, he heard the despairing
howl of Robin, and though he was sorry for Robin, he could not help
laughing. He remembered also a ludicrous sight he had seen at the
Zoological Gardens a few days ago: two seals, sitting bolt upright,
quarrelling with each other, and making the most absurd grimaces
and noises. They neither of them quite dared to attack the other,
and so sat with their faces close together, saying the rudest
things. Aunt Barbara would certainly have seen how inimitably his
father and he had, in their interview just now, resembled the two
seals.
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And then he became aware that all the time, au fond, he had thought
about nothing but Sylvia, and of Sylvia, not as the subject of
quarrel, but as just Sylvia, the singing Sylvia, with a hand on his
shoulder.
The winter sun was warm on the south terrace of the house, when, an
hour later, he strolled out, according to arrangement, with his
mother. It had melted the rime of the night before that lay now on
the grass in threads of minute diamonds, though below the terrace
wall, and on the sunk rims of the empty garden beds it still
persisted in outline of white heraldry. A few monthly roses, weak,
pink blossoms, weary with the toil of keeping hope alive till the
coming of spring, hung dejected heads in the sunk garden, where the
hornbeam hedge that carried its russet leaves unfallen, shaded them
from the wind. Here, too, a few bulbs had pricked their way above
ground, and stood with stout, erect horns daintily capped with
rime. All these things, which for years had been presented to Lady
Ashbridge's notice without attracting her attention; now filled her
with minute childlike pleasure; they were discoveries as entrancing
and as magical as the first finding of the oval pieces of blue sky
that a child sees one morning in a hedge-sparrow's nest. Now that
she was alone with her son, all her secret restlessness and anxiety
had vanished, and she remarked almost with glee that her husband
had telephoned from the golf links to say that he would not be back
for lunch; then, remembering that Michael had gone to talk to his
father after breakfast, she asked him about the interview.
Michael had already made up his mind as to what to say here.
Knowing that his father was anxious about her, he felt it highly
unlikely that he would tell her anything to distress her, and so he
represented the interview as having gone off in perfect amity.
Later in the day, on his father's return, he had made up his mind
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to propose a truce between them, as far as his mother was
concerned. Whether that would be accepted or not he could not
certainly tell, but in the interval there was nothing to be gained
by grieving her.
A great weight was lifted off her mind.
"Ah, my dear, that is good," she said. "I was anxious. So now
perhaps we shall have a peaceful Christmas. I am glad your Aunt
Barbara and Francis are coming, for though your aunt always laughs
at your father, she does it kindly, does she not? And as for
Francis--my dear, if God had given me two sons, I should have liked
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the other to be like Francis. And shall we walk a little farther
this way, and see poor Petsy's grave?"
Petsy's grave proved rather agitating. There were doleful little
stories of the last days to be related, and Petsy II. was tiresome,
and insisted on defying the world generally with shrill barkings
from the top of the small mound, conscious perhaps that his
helpless predecessor slept below. Then their walk brought them to
the band of trees that separated the links from the house, from
which Lady Ashbridge retreated, fearful, as she vaguely phrased it,
"of being seen," and by whom there was no need for her to explain.
Then across the field came a group of children scampering home from
school. They ceased their shouting and their games as the others
came near, and demurely curtsied and took off their caps to Lady
Ashbridge.
"Nice, well-behaved children," said she. "A merry Christmas to you
all. I hope you are all good children to your mothers, as my son
is to me."
She pressed his arm, nodded and smiled at the children, and walked
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on with him. And Michael felt the lump in his throat.
The arrival of Aunt Barbara and Francis that afternoon did
something, by the mere addition of numbers to the party, to relieve
the tension of the situation. Lord Ashbridge said little but ate
largely, and during the intervals of empty plates directed an
impartial gaze at the portraits of his ancestors, while wholly
ignoring his descendant. But Michael was too wise to put himself
into places where he could be pointedly ignored, and the
resplendent dinner, with its six footmen and its silver service,
was not really more joyless than usual. But his father's majestic
displeasure was more apparent when the three men sat alone
afterwards, and it was in dead silence that port was pushed round
and cigarettes handed. Francis, it is true, made a couple of
efforts to enliven things, but his remarks produced no response
whatever from his uncle, and he subsided into himself, thinking
with regret of what an amusing evening he would have had if he had
only stopped in town. But when they rose Michael signed to his
cousin to go on, and planted himself firmly in the path to the
door. It was evident that his father did not mean to speak to him,
but he could not push by him or walk over him.
"There is one thing I want to say to you, father," said he. "I
have told my mother that our interview this morning was quite
amicable. I do not see why she should be distressed by knowing
that it was not."
His father's face softened a moment.
"Yes, I agree to that," he said.
As far as that went, the compact was observed, and whenever Lady
Ashbridge was present her husband made a point of addressing a few
remarks to Michael, but there their intercourse ended. Michael
MICHAEL
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120
found opportunity to explain to Aunt Barbara what had happened,
suggesting as a consolatory simile the domestic difficulties of the
seals at the Zoological Gardens, and was pleased to find her
recognise the aptness of this description. But heaviest of all on
the spirits of the whole party sat the anxiety about Lady
Ashbridge. There could be no doubt that some cerebral degeneration
was occurring, and Lady Barbara's urgent representation to her
brother had the effect of making him promise to take her up to
London without delay after Christmas, and let a specialist see her.
For the present the pious fraud practised on her that Michael and
his father had had "a good talk" together, and were excellent
friends, sufficed to render her happy and cheerful. She had long,
dim talks, full of repetition, with Michael, whose presence
appeared to make her completely content, and when he was out or
away from her she would sit eagerly waiting for his return. Petsy,
to the great benefit of his health, got somewhat neglected by her;
her whole nature and instincts were alight with the mother-love
that had burnt so late into flame, with this tragic accompaniment
of derangement. She seemed to be groping her way back to the days
when Michael was a little boy, and she was a young woman; often she
would seat herself at her piano, if Michael was not there to play
to her, and in a thin, quavering voice sing the songs of twenty
years ago. She would listen to his playing, beating time to his
music, and most of all she loved the hour when the day was drawing
in, and the first shadow and flame of dusk and firelight; then,
with her hand in his, sitting in her room, where they would not be
interrupted, she would whisper fresh inquiries about Sylvia,
offering to go herself to the girl and tell her how lovable her
suitor was. She lived in a dim, subaqueous sort of consciousness,
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physically quite well, and mentally serene in the knowledge that
Michael was in the house, and would presently come and talk to her.
For the others it was dismal enough; this shadow, that was to her a
watery sunlight, lay over them all--this, and the further quarrel,
unknown to her, between Michael and his father. When they all met,
as at meal times, there was the miserable pretence of friendliness
and comfortable ease kept up, for fear of distressing Lady
Ashbridge. It was dreary work for all concerned, but, luckily, not
difficult of accomplishment. A little chatter about the weather,
the merest small change of conversation, especially if that
conversation was held between Michael and his father, was
sufficient to wreathe her in smiles, and she would, according to
habit, break in with some wrecking remark, that entailed starting
this talk all afresh. But when she left the room a glowering
silence would fall; Lord Ashbridge would pick up a book or leave
the room with his high-stepping walk and erect head, the picture of
insulted dignity.
Of the three he was far most to be pitied, although the situation
was the direct result of his own arrogance and self-importance; but
arrogance and self-importance were as essential ingredients of his
character as was humour of Aunt Barbara's. They were very awkward
and tiresome qualities, but this particular Lord Ashbridge would
have no existence without them. He was deeply and mortally
offended with Michael; that alone was sufficient to make a sultry
and stifling atmosphere, and in addition to that he had the burden
MICHAEL
121
of his anxiety about his wife. Here came an extra sting, for in
common humanity he had, by appearing to be friends with Michael, to
secure her serenity, and this could only be done by the continued
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profanation of his own highly proper and necessary attitude towards
his son. He had to address friendly words to Michael that really
almost choked him; he had to practise cordiality with this wretch
who wanted to marry the sister of a music-master. Michael had
pulled up all the old traditions, that carefully-tended and pompous
flower-garden, as if they had been weeds, and thrown them in his
father's face. It was indeed no wonder that, in his wife's
absence, he almost burst with indignation over the desecrated beds.
More than that, his own self-esteem was hurt by his wife's fear of
him, just as if he had been a hard and unkind husband to her, which
he had not been, but merely a very self-absorbed and dominant one,
while the one person who could make her quite happy was his
despised son. Michael's person, Michael's tastes, Michael's whole
presence and character were repugnant to him, and yet Michael had
the power which, to do Lord Ashbridge justice, he would have given
much to be possessed of himself, of bringing comfort and serenity
to his wife.
On the afternoon of the day following Christmas the two cousins had
been across the estuary to Ashbridge together. Francis, who, in
spite of his habitual easiness of disposition and general good
temper, had found the conditions of anger and anxiety quite
intolerable, had settled to leave next day, instead of stopping
till the end of the week, and Michael acquiesced in this without
any sense of desertion; he had really only wondered why Francis had
stopped three nights, instead of finding urgent private business in
town after one. He realised also, somewhat with surprise, that
Francis was "no good" when there was trouble about; there was no
one so delightful when there was, so to speak, a contest of who
should enjoy himself the most, and Francis invariably won. But if
the subject of the contest was changed, and the prize given for the
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individual who, under depressing circumstances, should contrive to
show the greatest serenity of aspect, Francis would have lost with
an even greater margin. Michael, in fact, was rather relieved than
otherwise at his cousin's immediate departure, for it helped nobody
to see the martyred St. Sebastian, and it was merely odious for St.
Sebastian himself. In fact, at this moment, when Michael was
rowing them back across the full-flooded estuary, Francis was
explaining this with his customary lucidity.
"I don't do any good here, Mike," he said. "Uncle Robert doesn't
speak to me any more than he does to you, except when Aunt Marion
is there. And there's nothing going on, is there? I practically
asked if I might go duck-shooting to-day, and Uncle Robert merely
looked out of the window. But if anybody, specially you, wanted me
to stop, why, of course I would."
"But I don't," said Michael.
"Thanks awfully. Gosh, look at those ducks! They're just wanting
to be shot. But there it is, then. Certainly Uncle Robert doesn't
want me, nor Aunt Marion. I say, what do they think is the matter
with her?"
MICHAEL
122
M
ichael looked round, then took, rather too late, another pull on
his oars, and the boat gently grated on the pebbly mud at the side
of the landing-place. Francis's question, the good-humoured
insouciance of it grated on his mind in rather similar fashion.
"We don't know yet," he said. "I expect we shall all go back to
town in a couple of days, so that she may see somebody."
Francis jumped out briskly and gracefully, and stood with his hands
in his pockets while Michael pushed off again, and brought the boat
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into its shed.
"I do hope it's nothing serious," he said. "She looks quite well,
doesn't she? I daresay it's nothing; but she's been alone, hasn't
she, with Uncle Robert all these weeks. That would give her the
hump, too."
Michael felt a sudden spasm of impatience at these elegant and
consoling reflections. But now, in the light of his own increasing
maturity, he saw how hopeless it was to feel Francis's
deficiencies, his entire lack of deep feeling. He was made like
that; and if you were fond of anybody the only possible way of
living up to your affection was to attach yourself to their
qualities.
They strolled a little way in silence.
"And why did you tell Uncle Robert about Sylvia Falbe?" asked
Francis. "I can't understand that. For the present, anyhow, she
had refused you. There was nothing to tell him about. If I was
fond of a girl like that I should say nothing about it, if I knew
my people would disapprove, until I had got her."
Michael laughed.
"Oh, yes you would," he said, "if you were to use your own words,
fond of her 'like that.' You couldn't help it. At least, I
couldn't. It's--it's such a glory to be fond like that."
He stopped.
"We won't talk about it," he said--"or, rather, I can't talk about
it, if you don't understand."
"But she had refused you," said the sensible Francis.
"That makes no difference. She shines through everything, through
the infernal awfulness of these days, through my father's anger,
and my mother's illness, whatever it proves to be--I think about
them really with all my might, and at the end I find I've been
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thinking about Sylvia. Everything is she--the woods, the tide--oh,
I can't explain."
They had walked across the marshy land at the edge of the estuary,
and now in front of them was the steep and direct path up to the
MICHAEL
123
house, and the longer way through the woods. At this point the
estuary made a sudden turn to the left, sweeping directly seawards,
and round the corner, immediately in front of them was the long
reach of deep water up which, even when the tide was at its lowest,
an ocean-going steamer could penetrate if it knew the windings of
the channel. To-day, in the windless, cold calm of mid-winter,
though the sun was brilliant in a blue sky overhead, an opaque
mist, thick as cotton-wool, lay over the surface of the water, and,
taking the winding road through the woods, which, following the
estuary, turned the point, they presently found themselves, as they
mounted, quite clear of the mist that lay below them on the river.
Their steps were noiseless on the mossy path, and almost
immediately after they had turned the corner, as Francis paused to
light a cigarette, they heard from just below them the creaking of
oars in their rowlocks. It caught the ears of them both, and
without conscious curiosity they listened. On the moment the sound
of rowing ceased, and from the dense mist just below them there
came a sound which was quite unmistakable, namely, the "plop" of
something heavy dropped into the water. That sound, by some remote
form of association, suddenly recalled to Michael's mind certain
questions Aunt Barbara had asked him about the Emperor's stay at
Ashbridge, and his own recollection of his having gone up and down
the river in a launch. There was something further, which he did
not immediately recollect. Yes, it was the request that if when he
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was here at Christmas he found strangers hanging about the deep-
water reach, of which the chart was known only to the Admiralty, he
should let her know. Here at this moment they were overlooking the
mist-swathed water, and here at this moment, unseen, was a boat
rowing stealthily, stopping, and, perhaps, making soundings.
He laid his hand on Francis's arm with a gesture for silence, then,
invisible below, someone said, "Fifteen fathoms," and again the
oars creaked audibly in the rowlocks.
Michael took a step towards his cousin, so that he could whisper to
him.
"Come back to the boat," he said. "I want to row round and see who
that is. Wait a moment, though."
The oars below made some half-dozen strokes, and then were still
again. Once more there came the sound of something heavy dropped
into the water.
"Someone is making soundings in the channel there," he said.
"Come."
They went very quietly till they were round the point, then
quickened their steps, and Michael spoke.
"That's the uncharted channel," he said; "at least, only the
Admiralty have the soundings. The water's deep enough right across
for a ship of moderate draught to come up, but there is a channel
up which any man-of-war can pass. Of course, it may be an
Admiralty boat making fresh soundings, but not likely on Boxing
Day."
MICHAEL
124
"What are you going to do?" asked Francis, striding easily along by
Michael's short steps.
"Just see if we can find out who it is. Aunt Barbara asked me
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about it. I'll tell you afterwards. Now the tide's going out we
can drop down with it, and we shan't be heard. I'll row just
enough to keep her head straight. Sit in the bow, Francis, and
keep a sharp look-out."
Foot by foot they dropped down the river, and soon came into the
thick mist that lay beyond the point. It was impossible to see
more than a yard or two ahead, but the same dense obscurity would
prevent any further range of vision from the other boat, and, if it
was still at its work, the sound of its oars or of voices, Michael
reflected, might guide him to it. From the lisp of little wavelets
lapping on the shore below the woods, he knew he was quite close in
to the bank, and close also to the place where the invisible boat
had been ten minutes before. Then, in the bewildering, unlocalised
manner in which sound without the corrective guidance of sight
comes to the ears, he heard as before the creaking of invisible
oars, somewhere quite close at hand. Next moment the dark prow of
a rowing-boat suddenly loomed into sight on their starboard, and he
took a rapid stroke with his right-hand scull to bring them up to
it. But at the same moment, while yet the occupants of the other
boat were but shadows in the mist, they saw him, and a quick word
of command rang out.
"Row--row hard!" it cried, and with a frenzied churning of oars in
the water, the other boat shot by them, making down the estuary.
Next moment it had quite vanished in the mist, leaving behind it
knots of swirling water from its oar-blades.
Michael started in vain pursuit; his craft was heavy and clumsy,
and from the retreating and faint-growing sound of the other, it
was clear that he could get no pace to match, still less to
overtake them. Soon he pantingly desisted.
"But an Admiralty boat wouldn't have run away," he said. "They'd
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have asked us who the devil we were."
"But who else was it?" asked Francis.
Michael mopped his forehead.
"Aunt Barbara would tell you," he said. "She would tell you that
they were German spies."
Francis laughed.
"Or Timbuctoo niggers," he remarked.
"And that would be an odd thing, too," said Michael.
But at that moment he felt the first chill of the shadow that
menaced, if by chance Aunt Barbara was right, and if already the
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125
clear tranquillity of the sky was growing dim as with the mist that
lay that afternoon on the waters of the deep reach, and covered
mysterious movements which were going on below it. England and
Germany--there was so much of his life and his heart there. Music
and song, and Sylvia.
CHAPTER X
Michael had heard the verdict of the brain specialist, who
yesterday had seen his mother, and was sitting in his room beside
his unopened piano quietly assimilating it, and, without making
plans of his own initiative, contemplating the forms into which the
future was beginning to fall, mapping itself out below him,
outlining itself as when objects in a room, as the light of morning
steals in, take shape again. And even as they take the familiar
shapes, so already he felt that he had guessed all this in that
week down at Ashbridge, from which he had returned with his father
and mother a couple of days before.
She was suffering, without doubt, from some softening of the brain;
nothing of remedial nature could possibly be done to arrest or cure
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the progress of the disease, and all that lay in human power was to
secure for her as much content and serenity as possible. In her
present condition there was no question of putting her under
restraint, nor, indeed, could she be certified by any doctor as
insane. She would have to have a trained attendant, she would live
a secluded life, from which must be kept as far as possible
anything that could agitate or distress her, and after that there
was nothing more that could be done except to wait for the
inevitable development of her malady. This might come quickly or
slowly; there was no means of forecasting that, though the rapid
deterioration of her brain, which had taken place during those last
two months, made it, on the whole, likely that the progress of the
disease would be swift. It was quite possible, on the other hand,
that it might remain stationary for months. . . . And in answer to
a question of Michael's, Sir James had looked at him a moment in
silence. Then he answered.
"Both for her sake and for the sake of all of you," he had said,
"one hopes that it will be swift."
Lord Ashbridge had just telephoned that he was coming round to see
Michael, a message that considerably astonished him, since it would
have been more in his manner, in the unlikely event of his wishing
to see his son, to have summoned him to the house in Curzon Street.
However, he had announced his advent, and thus, waiting for him,
and not much concerning himself about that, Michael let the future
map itself. Already it was sharply defined, its boundaries and
limits were clear, and though it was yet untravelled it presented
to him a familiar aspect, and he felt that he could find his
allotted road without fail, though he had never yet traversed it.
It was strongly marked; there could be no difficulty or question
about it. Indeed, a week ago, when first the recognition of his
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mother's condition, with the symptoms attached to it, was known to
him, he had seen the signpost that directed him into the future.
Lord Ashbridge made his usual flamboyant entry, prancing and
swinging his elbows. Whatever happened he would still be Lord
Ashbridge, with his grey top-hat and his large carnation and his
enviable position.
"You will have heard what Sir James's opinion is about your poor
mother," he said. "It was in consequence of what he recommended
when he talked over the future with me that I came to see you."
Michael guessed very well what this recommendation was, but with a
certain stubbornness and sense of what was due to himself, he let
his father proceed with the not very welcome task of telling him.
"In fact, Michael," he said, "I have a favour to ask of you."
The fact of his being Lord Ashbridge, and the fact of Michael being
his unsatisfactory son, stiffened him, and he had to qualify the
favour.
"Perhaps I should not say I am about to ask you a favour," he
corrected himself, "but rather to point out to you what is your
obvious duty."
Suddenly it struck Michael that his father was not thinking about
Lady Ashbridge at all, nor about him, but in the main about
himself. All had to be done from the dominant standpoint; he owed
it to himself to alleviate the conditions under which his wife must
live; he owed it to himself that his son should do his part as a
Comber. There was no longer any possible doubt as to what this
favour, or this direction of duty, must be, but still Michael chose
that his father should state it. He pushed a chair forward for
him.
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"Won't you sit down?" he said.
"Thank you, I would rather stand. Yes; it is not so much a favour
as the indication of your duty. I do not know if you will see it
in the same light as I; you have shown me before now that we do not
take the same view."
Michael felt himself bristling. His father certainly had the
effect of drawing out in him all the feelings that were better
suppressed.
"I think we need not talk of that now, sir," he remarked.
"Certainly it is not the subject of my interview with you now. The
fact is this. In some way your presence gives a certain serenity
and content to your mother. I noticed that at Ashbridge, and,
indeed, there has been some trouble with her this morning because I
could not take her to come to see you with me. I ask you,
therefore, for her sake, to be with us as much as you can, in
short, to come and live with us."
MICHAEL
127
Michael nodded, saluting, so to speak, the signpost into the future
as he passed it.
"I had already determined to do that," he said. "I had determined,
at any rate, to ask your permission to do so. It is clear that my
mother wants me, and no other consideration can weigh with that."
Lord Ashbridge still remained completely self-sufficient.
"I am glad you take that view of it," he said. "I think that is all
I have to say."
Now Michael was an adept at giving; as indicated before, when he
gave, he gave nobly, and he could not only outwardly disregard, but
he inwardly cancelled the wonderful ungenerosity with which his
father received. That did not concern him.
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"I will make arrangements to come at once," he said, "if you can
receive me to-day."
"That will hardly be worth while, will it? I am taking your mother
back to Ashbridge tomorrow."
Michael got up in silence. After all, this gift of himself, of his
time, of his liberty, of all that constituted life to him, was made
not to his father, but to his mother. It was made, as his heart
knew, not ungrudgingly only, but eagerly, and if it had been
recommended by the doctor that she should go to Ashbridge, he would
have entirely disregarded the large additional sacrifice on himself
which it entailed. Thus it was not owing to any retraction of his
gift, or reconsideration of it, that he demurred.
"I hope you will--will meet me half-way about this, sir," he said.
"You must remember that all my work lies in London. I want,
naturally, to continue that as far as I can. If you go to
Ashbridge it is completely interrupted. My friends are here too;
everything I have is here."
His father seemed to swell a little; he appeared to fill the room.
"And all my duties lie at Ashbridge," he said. "As you know, I am
not of the type of absentee landlords. It is quite impossible that
I should spend these months in idleness in town. I have never done
such a thing yet, nor, I may say, would our class hold the position
they do if we did. We shall come up to town after Easter, should
your mother's health permit it, but till then I could not dream of
neglecting my duties in the country."
Now Michael knew perfectly well what his father's duties on that
excellently managed estate were. They consisted of a bi-weekly
interview in the "business-room" (an abode of files and stags'
heads, in which Lord Ashbridge received various reports of building
schemes and repairs), of a round of golf every afternoon, and of
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reading the lessons and handing the offertory-box on Sunday. That,
at least, was the sum-total as it presented itself to him, and on
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128
which he framed his conclusions. But he left out altogether the
moral effect of the big landlord living on his own land, and being
surrounded by his own dependents, which his father, on the other
hand, so vastly over-estimated. It was clear that there was not
likely to be much accord between them on this subject.
"But could you not go down there perhaps once or twice a week, and
get Bailey to come and consult you here?" he asked.
Lord Ashbridge held his head very high.
"That would be completely out of the question," he said.
All this, Michael felt, had nothing to do with the problem of his
mother and himself. It was outside it altogether, and concerned
only his father's convenience. He was willing to press this point
as far as possible.
"I had imagined you would stop in London," he said. "Supposing
under these circumstances I refuse to live with you?"
"I should draw my own conclusion as to the sincerity of your
profession of duty towards your mother."
"And practically what would you do?" asked Michael.
"Your mother and I would go to Ashbridge tomorrow all the same."
Another alternative suddenly suggested itself to Michael which he
was almost ashamed of proposing, for it implied that his father put
his own convenience as outweighing any other consideration. But he
saw that if only Lord Ashbridge was selfish enough to consent to
it, it had manifest merits. His mother would be alone with him,
free of the presence that so disconcerted her.
"I propose, then," he said, "that she and I should remain in town,
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as you want to be at Ashbridge."
He had been almost ashamed of suggesting it, but no such shame was
reflected in his father's mind. This would relieve him of the
perpetual embarrassment of his wife's presence, and the perpetual
irritation of Michael's. He had persuaded himself that he was
making a tremendous personal sacrifice in proposing that Michael
should live with them, and this relieved him of the necessity.
"Upon my word, Michael," he said, with the first hint of cordiality
that he had displayed, "that is very well thought of. Let us
consider; it is certainly the case that this derangement in your
poor mother's mind has caused her to take what I might almost call
a dislike to me. I mentioned that to Sir James, though it was very
painful for me to do so, and he said that it was a common and most
distressing symptom of brain disease, that the sufferer often
turned against those he loved best. Your plan would have the
effect of removing that."
He paused a moment, and became even more sublimely fatuous.
MICHAEL
129
"You, too," he said, "it would obviate the interruption of your
work, about which you feel so keenly. You would be able to go on
with it. Of myself, I don't think at all. I shall be lonely, no
doubt, at Ashbridge, but my own personal feelings must not be taken
into account. Yes; it seems to me a very sensible notion. We
shall have to see what your mother says to it. She might not like
me to be away from her, in spite of her apparent--er--dislike of
me. It must all depend on her attitude. But for my part I think
very well of your scheme. Thank you, Michael, for suggesting it."
He left immediately after this to ascertain Lady Ashbridge's
feelings about it, and walked home with a complete resumption of
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his usual exuberance. It indeed seemed an admirable plan. It
relieved him from the nightmare of his wife's continual presence,
and this he expressed to himself by thinking that it relieved her
from his. It was not that he was deficient in sympathy for her,
for in his self-centred way he was fond of her, but he could
sympathise with her just as well at Ashbridge. He could do no good
to her, and he had not for her that instinct of love which would
make it impossible for him to leave her. He would also be spared
the constant irritation of having Michael in the house, and this he
expressed to himself by saying that Michael disliked him, and would
be far more at his ease without him. Furthermore, Michael would be
able to continue his studies . . . of this too, in spite of the
fact that he had always done his best to discourage them, he made a
self-laudatory translation, by telling himself that he was very
glad not to have to cause Michael to discontinue them. In fine, he
persuaded himself, without any difficulty, that he was a very fine
fellow in consenting to a plan that suited him so admirably, and
only wondered that he had not thought of it himself. There was
nothing, after his wife had expressed her joyful acceptance of it,
to detain him in town, and he left for Ashbridge that afternoon,
while Michael moved into the house in Curzon Street.
Michael entered upon his new life without the smallest sense of
having done anything exceptional or even creditable. It was so
perfectly obvious to him that he had to be with his mother that he
had no inclination to regard himself at all in the matter; the
thing was as simple as it had been to him to help Francis out of
financial difficulties with a gift of money. There was no effort
of will, no sense of sacrifice about it, it was merely the
assertion of a paramount instinct. The life limited his freedom,
for, for a great part of the day he was with his mother, and
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between his music and his attendance on her, he had but little
leisure. Occasionally he went out to see his friends, but any
prolonged absence on his part always made her uneasy, and he would
often find her, on his return, sitting in the hall, waiting for
him, so as to enjoy his presence from the first moment that he re-
entered the house. But though he found no food for reflection in
himself, Aunt Barbara, who came to see them some few days after
Michael had been installed here, found a good deal.
They had all had tea together, and afterwards Lady Ashbridge's
nurse had come down to fetch her upstairs to rest. And then Aunt
Barbara surprised Michael, for she came across the room to him,
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with her kind eyes full of tears, and kissed him.
"My dear, I must say it once," she said, "and then you will know
that it is always in my mind. You have behaved nobly, Michael;
it's a big word, but I know no other. As for your father--"
Michael interrupted her.
"Oh, I don't understand him," he said. "At least, that's the best
way to look at it. Let's leave him out."
He paused a moment.
"After all, it is a much better plan than our living all three of
us at Ashbridge. It's better for my mother, and for me, and for
him."
"I know, but how he could consent to the better plan," she said.
"Well, let us leave him out. Poor Robert! He and his golf. My
dear, your father is a very ludicrous person, you know. But about
you, Michael, do you think you can stand it?"
He smiled at her.
"Why, of course I can," he said. "Indeed, I don't think I'll
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accept that statement of it. It's--it's such a score to be able to
be of use, you know. I can make my mother happy. Nobody else can.
I think I'm getting rather conceited about it."
"Yes, dear; I find you insufferable," remarked Aunt Barbara
parenthetically.
"Then you must just bear it. The thing is"--Michael took a moment
to find the words he searched for--"the thing is I want to be
wanted. Well, it's no light thing to be wanted by your mother,
even if--"
He sat down on the sofa by his aunt.
"Aunt Barbara, how ironically gifts come," he said. "This was
rather a sinister way of giving, that my mother should want me like
this just as her brain was failing. And yet that failure doesn't
affect the quality of her love. Is it something that shines
through the poor tattered fabric? Anyhow, it has nothing to do
with her brain. It is she herself, somehow, not anything of hers,
that wants me. And you ask if I can stand it?"
Michael with his ugly face and his kind eyes and his simple heart
seemed extraordinarily charming just then to Aunt Barbara. She
wished that Sylvia could have seen him then in all the
unconsciousness of what he was doing so unquestioningly, or that
she could have seen him as she had with his mother during the last
hour. Lady Ashbridge had insisted on sitting close to him, and
holding his hand whenever she could possess herself of it, of
plying him with a hundred repeated questions, and never once had
she made Michael either ridiculous or self-conscious. And this,
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she reflected, went on most of the day, and for how many days it
would go on, none knew. Yet Michael could not consider even
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whether he could stand it; he rejected the expression as
meaningless.
"And your friends?" she said. "Do you manage to see them?"
"Oh, yes, occasionally," said Michael. "They don't come here, for
the presence of strangers makes my mother agitated. She thinks
they have some design of taking her or me away. But she wants to
see Sylvia. She knows about--about her and me, and I can't make up
my mind what to do about it. She is always asking if I can't take
her to see Sylvia, or get her to come here."
"And why not? Sylvia knows about your mother, I suppose."
"I expect so. I told Hermann. But I am afraid my mother will--
well, you can't call it arguing--but will try to persuade her to
have me. I can't let Sylvia in for that. Nor, if it comes to
that, can I let myself in for that."
"Can't you impress on your mother that she mustn't?"
Michael leaned forward to the fire, pondering this, and stretching
out his big hands to the blaze.
"Yes, I might," he said. "I should love to see Sylvia again, just
see her, you know. We settled that the old terms we were on
couldn't continue. At least, I settled that, and she understood."
"Sylvia is a gaby," remarked Aunt Barbara.
"I'm rather glad you think so."
"Oh, get her to come," said she. "I'm sure your mother will do as
you tell her. I'll be here too, if you like, if that will do any
good. By the way, I see your Hermann's piano recital comes off to-
morrow."
"I know. My mother wants to go to that, and I think I shall take
her. Will you come too, Aunt Barbara, and sit on the other side of
her? My 'Variations' are going to be played. If they are a
success, Hermann tells me I shall be dragged screaming on to the
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platform, and have to bow. Lord! And if they're not, well, 'Lord'
also."
"Yes, my dear, of course I'll come. Let me see, I shall have to
lie, as I have another engagement, but a little thing like that
doesn't bother me."
Suddenly she clapped her hands together.
"My dear, I quite forgot," she said. "Michael, such excitement.
You remember the boat you heard taking soundings on the deep-water
reach? Of course you do! Well, I sent that information to the
proper quarter, and since then watch has been kept in the woods
MICHAEL
132
just above it. Last night only the coastguard police caught four
men at it--all Germans. They tried to escape as they did before,
by rowing down the river, but there was a steam launch below which
intercepted them. They had on them a chart of the reach, with
soundings, nearly complete; and when they searched their houses--
they are all tenants of your astute father, who merely laughed at
us--they found a very decent map of certain private areas at
Harwich. Oh, I'm not such a fool as I look. They thanked me, my
dear, for my information, and I very gracefully said that my
information was chiefly got by you."
"But did those men live in Ashbridge?" asked Michael.
"Yes; and your father will have four decorous houses on his hands.
I am glad: he should not have laughed at us. It will teach him, I
hope. And now, my dear, I must go."
She stood up, and put her hand on Michael's arm.
"And you know what I think of you," she said. "To-morrow evening,
then. I hate music usually; but then I adore Mr. Hermann. I only
wish he wasn't a German. Can't you get him to naturalise himself
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and his sister?"
"You wouldn't ask that if you had seen him in Munich," said
Michael.
"I suppose not. Patriotism is such a degrading emotion when it is
not English."
Michael's "Variations" came some half-way down the programme next
evening, and as the moment for them approached, Lady Ashbridge got
more and more excited.
"I hope he knows them by heart properly, dear," she whispered to
Michael. "I shall be so nervous for fear he'll forget them in the
middle, which is so liable to happen if you play without your
notes."
Michael laid his hand on his mother's.
"Hush, mother," he said, "you mustn't talk while he's playing."
"Well, I was only whispering. But if you tell me I mustn't--"
The hall was crammed from end to end, for not only was Hermann a
person of innumerable friends, but he had already a considerable
reputation, and, being a German, all musical England went to hear
him. And to-night he was playing superbly, after a couple of days
of miserable nervousness over his debut as a pianist; but his
temperament was one of those that are strung up to their highest
pitch by such nervous agonies; he required just that to make him do
full justice to his own personality, and long before he came to the
"Variations," Michael felt quite at ease about his success. There
was no question about it any more: the whole audience knew that
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133
they were listening to a master. In the row immediately behind
Michael's party were sitting Sylvia and her mother, who had not
quite been torn away from her novels, since she had sought "The
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Love of Hermione Hogarth" underneath her cloak, and read it
furtively in pauses. They had come in after Michael, and until the
interval between the classical and the modern section of the
concert he was unaware of their presence; then idly turning round
to look at the crowded hall, he found himself face to face with the
girl.
"I had no idea you were there," he said. "Hermann will do, won't
he? I think--"
And then suddenly the words of commonplace failed him, and he
looked at her in silence.
"I knew you were back," she said. "Hermann told me about--
everything."
Michael glanced sideways, indicating his mother, who sat next him,
and was talking to Barbara.
"I wondered whether perhaps you would come and see my mother and
me," he said. "May I write?"
She looked at him with the friendliness of her smiling eyes and her
grave mouth.
"Is it necessary to ask?" she said.
Michael turned back to his seat, for his mother had had quite
enough of her sister-in-law, and wanted him again. She looked over
her shoulder for a moment to see whom Michael was talking to.
"I'm enjoying my concert, dear," she said. "And who is that nice
young lady? Is she a friend of yours?"
The interval was over, and Hermann returned to the platform, and
waiting for a moment for the buzz of conversation to die down, gave
out, without any preliminary excursion on the keys, the text of
Michael's "Variations." Then he began to tell them, with light and
flying fingers, what that simple tune had suggested to Michael, how
he imagined himself looking on at an old-fashioned dance, and while
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the dancers moved to the graceful measure of a minuet, or daintily
in a gavotte, the tune of "Good King Wenceslas" still rang in his
head, or, how in the joy of the sunlight of a spring morning it
still haunted him. It lay behind a cascade of foaming waters that,
leaping, roared into a ravine; it marched with flying banners on
some day of victorious entry, it watched a funeral procession wind
by, with tapers and the smell of incense; it heard, as it got
nearer back to itself again, the peals of Christmas bells, and
stood forth again in its own person, decorated and emblazoned.
Hermann had already captured his audience; now he held them tame in
the hollow of his hand. Twice he bowed, and then, in answer to the
demand, just beckoned with his finger to Michael, who rose. For a
MICHAEL
134
moment his mother wished to detain him.
"You're not going to leave me, my dear, are you?" she asked
anxiously.
He waited to explain to her quietly, left her, and, feeling rather
dazed, made his way round to the back and saw the open door on to
the platform confronting him. He felt that no power on earth could
make him step into the naked publicity there, but at the moment
Hermann appeared in the doorway.
"Come on, Mike," he said, laughing. "Thank the pretty ladies and
gentlemen! Lord, isn't it all a lark!"
Michael advanced with him, stared and hoped he smiled properly,
though he felt that he was nailing some hideous grimace to his
face; and then just below him he saw his mother eagerly pointing
him out to a total stranger, with gesticulation, and just behind
her Sylvia looking at her, and not at him, with such tenderness,
such kindly pity. There were the two most intimately bound into
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his life, the mother who wanted him, the girl whom he wanted; and
by his side was Hermann, who, as Michael always knew, had thrown
open the gates of life to him. All the rest, even including Aunt
Barbara, seemed of no significance in that moment. Afterwards, no
doubt, he would be glad they were pleased, be proud of having
pleased them; but just now, even when, for the first time in his
life, that intoxicating wine of appreciation was given him, he
stood with it bubbling and yellow in his hand, not drinking of it.
Michael had prepared the way of Sylvia's coming by telling his
mother the identity of the "nice young lady" at the concert; he had
also impressed on her the paramount importance of not saying
anything with regard to him that could possibly embarrass the nice
young lady, and when Sylvia came to tea a few days later, he was
quite without any uneasiness, while for himself he was only
conscious of that thirst for her physical presence, the desire, as
he had said to Aunt Barbara, "just to see her." Nor was there the
slightest embarrassment in their meeting! it was clear that there
was not the least difficulty either for him or her in being
natural, which, as usually happens, was the complete solution.
"That is good of you to come," he said, meeting her almost at the
door. "My mother has been looking forward to your visit. Mother
dear, here is Miss Falbe."
Lady Ashbridge was pathetically eager to be what she called "good."
Michael had made it clear to her that it was his wish that Miss
Falbe should not be embarrassed, and any wish just now expressed by
Michael was of the nature of a divine command to her.
"Well, this is a pleasure," she said, looking across to Michael
with the eyes of a dog on a beloved master. "And we are not
strangers quite, are we, Miss Falbe? We sat so near each other to
listen to your brother, who I am sure plays beautifully, and the
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music which Michael made. Haven't I got a clever son, and such a
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good one?"
Sylvia was unerring. Michael had known she would be.
"Indeed, you have," she said, sitting down by her. "And Michael
mustn't hear what we say about him, must he, or he'll be getting
conceited."
Lady Ashbridge laughed.
"And that would never do, would it?" she said, still retaining
Sylvia's hand. Then a little dim ripple of compunction broke in
her mind. "Michael," she said, "we are only joking about your
getting conceited. Miss Falbe and I are only joking. And--and
won't you take off your hat, Miss Falbe, for you are not going to
hurry away, are you? You are going to pay us a long visit."
Michael had not time to remind his mother that ladies who come to
tea do not usually take their hats off, for on the word Sylvia's
hands were busy with her hatpins.
"
I'm so glad you suggested that," she said. "I always want to take
my hat off. I don't know who invented hats, but I wish he hadn't."
Lady Ashbridge looked at her masses of bright hair, and could not
help telegraphing a note of admiration, as it were, to Michael.
"Now, that's more comfortable," she said. "You look as if you
weren't going away next minute. When I like to see people, I hate
their going away. I'm afraid sometimes that Michael will go away,
but he tells me he won't. And you liked Michael's music, Miss
Falbe? Was it not clever of him to think of all that out of one
simple little tune? And he tells me you sing so nicely. Perhaps
you would sing to us when we've had tea. Oh, and here is my
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sister-in-law. Do you know her--Lady Barbara? My dear, what is
your husband's name?"
Seeing Sylvia uncovered, Lady Barbara, with a tact that was
creditable to her, but strangely unsuccessful, also began taking
off her hat. Her sister-in-law was too polite to interfere, but,
as a matter of fact, she did not take much pleasure in the notion
that Barbara was going to stay a very long time, too. She was fond
of her, but it was not Barbara whom Michael wanted. She turned her
attention to the girl again.
"My husband's away," she said, confidentially; "he is very busy
down at Ashbridge, and I daresay he won't find time to come up to
town for many weeks yet. But, you know, Michael and I do very well
without him, very well, indeed, and it would never do to take him
away from his duties--would it, Michael?"
Here was a shoal to be avoided.
"No, you mustn't think of tempting him to come up to town," said
Michael. "Give me some tea for Aunt Barbara."
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This answer entranced Lady Ashbridge; she had to nudge Michael
several times to show that she understood the brilliance of it, and
put lump after lump of sugar into Barbara's cup in her rapt
appreciation of it. But very soon she turned to Sylvia again.
"And your brother is a friend of Michael's, too, isn't he?" she
said. "Some day perhaps he will come to see me. We don't see many
people, Michael and I, for we find ourselves very well content
alone. But perhaps some day he will come and play his concert over
again to us; and then, perhaps, if you ask me, I will sing to you.
I used to sing a great deal when I was younger. Michael--where has
Michael gone?"
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Michael had just left the room to bring some cigarettes in from
next door, and Lady Ashbridge ran after him, calling him. She
found him in the hall, and brought him back triumphantly.
"Now we will all sit and talk for a long time," she said. "You one
side of me, Miss Falbe, and Michael the other. Or would you be so
kind as to sing for us? Michael will play for you, and would it
annoy you if I came and turned over the pages? It would give me a
great deal of pleasure to turn over for you, if you will just nod
each time when you are ready."
Sylvia got up.
"Why, of course," she said. "What have you got, Michael? I
haven't anything with me."
Michael found a volume of Schubert, and once again, as on the first
time he had seen her, she sang "Who is Sylvia?" while he played,
and Lady Ashbridge had her eyes fixed now on one and now on the
other of them, waiting for their nod to do her part; and then she
wanted to sing herself, and with some far-off remembrance of the
airs and graces of twenty-five years ago, she put her handkerchief
and her rings on the top of the piano, and, playing for herself,
emitted faint treble sounds which they knew to be "The Soldier's
Farewell."
Then presently her nurse came for her to lie down before dinner,
and she was inclined to be tearful and refuse to go till Michael
made it clear that it was his express and sovereign will that she
should do so. Then very audibly she whispered to him. "May I ask
her to give me a kiss?" she said. "She looks so kind, Michael, I
don't think she would mind."
Sylvia went back home with a little heartache for Michael,
wondering, if she was in his place, if her mother, instead of being
absorbed in her novels, demanded such incessant attentions, whether
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she had sufficient love in her heart to render them with the
exquisite simplicity, the tender patience that Michael showed.
Well as she knew him, greatly as she liked him, she had not
imagined that he, or indeed any man could have behaved quite like
that. There seemed no effort at all about it; he was not trying to
be patient; he had the sense of "patience's perfect work" natural
MICHAEL
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to him; he did not seem to have to remind himself that his mother
was ill, and thus he must be gentle with her. He was gentle with
her because he was in himself gentle. And yet, though his
behaviour was no effort to him, she guessed how wearying must be
the continual strain of the situation itself. She felt that she
would get cross from mere fatigue, however excellent her intentions
might be, however willing the spirit. And no one, so she had
understood from Barbara, could take Michael's place. In his
occasional absences his mother was fretful and miserable, and day
by day Michael left her less. She would sit close to him when he
was practising--a thing that to her or to Hermann would have
rendered practice impossible--and if he wrestled with one hand over
a difficult bar, she would take the other into hers, would ask him
if he was not getting tired, would recommend him to rest for a
little; and yet Michael, who last summer had so stubbornly insisted
on leading his own life, and had put his determination into effect
in the teeth of all domestic opposition, now with more than
cheerfulness laid his own life aside in order to look after his
mother. Sylvia felt that the real heroisms of life were not so
much the fine heady deeds which are so obviously admirable, as such
serene steadfastness, such unvarying patience as that which she had
just seen.
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Her whole soul applauded Michael, and yet below her applause was
this heartache for him, the desire to be able to help him to bear
the burden which must be so heavy, though he bore it so blithely.
But in the very nature of things there was but one way in which she
could help him, and in that she was powerless. She could not give
him what he wanted. But she longed to be able to.
CHAPTER XI
It was a morning of early March, and Michael, looking out from the
dining-room window at the house in Curzon Street, where he had just
breakfasted alone, was smitten with wonder and a secret ecstasy,
for he suddenly saw and felt that it was winter no longer, but that
spring had come. For the last week the skies had screamed with
outrageous winds and had been populous with flocks of sullen clouds
that discharged themselves in sleet and snowy rain, and half last
night, for he had slept very badly, he had heard the dashing of
showers, as of wind-driven spray, against the window-panes, and had
listened to the fierce rattling of the frames. Towards morning he
had slept, and during those hours it seemed that a new heaven and a
new earth had come into being; vitally and essentially the world
was a different affair altogether.
At the back of the house on to which these windows looked was a
garden of some half acre, a square of somewhat sooty grass, bounded
by high walls, with a few trees at the further end. Into it, too,
had the message that thrilled through his bones penetrated, and
this little oasis of doubtful grass and blackened shrubs had a
totally different aspect to-day from that which it had worn all
those weeks. The sparrows that had sat with fluffed-up feathers in
corners sheltered from the gales, were suddenly busy and shrilly
MICHAEL
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vocal, chirruping and dragging about straws, and flying from limb
to limb of the trees with twigs in their beaks. For the first time
he noticed that little verdant cabochons of folded leaf had globed
themselves on the lilac bushes below the window, crocuses had
budded, and in the garden beds had shot up the pushing spikes of
bulbs, while in the sooty grass he could see specks and patches of
vivid green, the first growth of the year.
He opened the window and strolled out. The whole taste and savour
of the air was changed, and borne on the primrose-coloured sunshine
came the smell of damp earth, no longer dead and reeking of the
decay of autumn, but redolent with some new element, something
fertile and fecund, something daintily, indefinably laden with the
secret of life and restoration. The grey, lumpy clouds were gone,
and instead chariots of dazzling white bowled along the infinite
blue expanse, harnessed to the southwest wind. But, above all, the
sparrows dragged straws to and fro, loudly chirruping. All spring
was indexed there.
For a moment Michael was entranced with the exquisite moment, and
stood sunning his soul in spring. But then he felt the fetters of
his own individual winter heavy on him again, and he could only see
what was happening without feeling it. For that moment he had felt
the leap in his blood, but the next he was conscious again of the
immense fatigue that for weeks had been growing on him. The task
which he had voluntarily taken on himself had become no lighter
with habit, the incessant attendance on his mother and the strain
of it got heavier day by day. For some time now her childlike
content in his presence had been clouded and, instead, she was
constantly depressed and constantly querulous with him, finding
fault with his words and his silences, and in her confused and
muffled manner blaming him and affixing sinister motives to his
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most innocent actions. But she was still entirely dependent on
him, and if he left her for an hour or two, she would wait in an
agony of anxiety for his return, and when he came back overwhelmed
him with tearful caresses and the exaction of promises not to go
away again. Then, feeling certain of him once more, she would
start again on complaints and reproaches. Her doctor had warned
him that it looked as if some new phase of her illness was
approaching, which might necessitate the complete curtailment of
her liberty; but day had succeeded to day and she still remained in
the same condition, neither better nor worse, but making every
moment a burden to Michael.
It had been necessary that Sylvia should discontinue her visits,
for some weeks ago Lady Ashbridge had suddenly taken a dislike to
her, and, when she came, would sit in silent and lofty displeasure,
speaking to her as little as possible, and treating her with a
chilling and awful politeness. Michael had enough influence with
his mother to prevent her telling the girl what her crime had been,
which was her refusal to marry him; but, when he was alone with his
mother, he had to listen to torrents of these complaints. Lady
Ashbridge, with a wealth of language that had lain dormant in her
all her life, sarcastically supposed that Miss Falbe was a princess
in disguise ("very impenetrable disguise, for I'm sure she reminds
me of a barmaid more than a princess"), and thought that such a
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marriage would be beneath her. Or, another time, she hinted that
Miss Falbe might be already married; indeed, this seemed a very
plausible explanation of her attitude. She desired, in fact, that
Sylvia should not come to see her any more, and now, when she did
not, there was scarcely a day in which Lady Ashbridge would not
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talk in a pointed manner about pretended friends who leave you
alone, and won't even take the trouble to take a two-penny 'bus (if
they are so poor as all that) to come from Chelsea to Curzon
Street.
Michael knew that his mother's steps were getting nearer and nearer
to that border line which separates the sane from the insane, and
with all the wearing strain of the days as they passed, had but the
one desire in his heart, namely, to keep her on the right side for
as long as was humanly possible. But something might happen, some
new symptom develop which would make it impossible for her to go on
living with him as she did now, and the dread of that moment
haunted his waking hours and his dreams. Two months ago her doctor
had told him that, for the sake of everyone concerned, it was to be
hoped that the progress of her disease would be swift; but, for his
part, Michael passionately disclaimed such a wish. In spite of her
constant complaints and strictures, she was still possessed of her
love for him, and, wearing though every day was, he grudged the
passing of the hours that brought her nearer to the awful boundary
line. Had a deed been presented to him for his signature, which
bound him indefinitely to his mother's service, on the condition
that she got no worse, his pen would have spluttered with his
eagerness to sign.
In consequence of his mother's dislike to Sylvia, Michael had
hardly seen her during this last month. Once, when owing to some
small physical disturbance, Lady Ashbridge had gone to bed early on
a Sunday evening, he had gone to one of the Falbes' weekly parties,
and had tried to fling himself with enjoyment into the friendly
welcoming atmosphere. But for the present, he felt himself
detached from it all, for this life with his mother was close round
him with a sort of nightmare obsession, through which outside
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influence and desire could only faintly trickle. He knew that the
other life was there, he knew that in his heart he longed for
Sylvia as much as ever; but, in his present detachment, his desire
for her was a drowsy ache, a remote emptiness, and the veil that
lay over his mother seemed to lie over him also. Once, indeed,
during the evening, when he had played for her, the veil had lifted
and for the drowsy ache he had the sunlit, stabbing pang; but, as
he left, the veil dropped again, and he let himself into the big,
mute house, sorry that he had left it. In the same way, too, his
music was in abeyance: he could not concentrate himself or find it
worth while to make the effort to absorb himself in it, and he knew
that short of that, there was neither profit nor pleasure for him
in his piano. Everything seemed remote compared with the immediate
foreground: there was a gap, a gulf between it and all the rest of
the world.
His father wrote to him from time to time, laying stress on the
extreme importance of all he was doing in the country, and giving
no hint of his coming up to town at present. But he faintly
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adumbrated the time when in the natural course of events he would
have to attend to his national duties in the House of Lords, and
wondered whether it would not (about then) be good for his wife to
have a change, and enjoy the country when the weather became more
propitious. Michael, with an excusable unfilialness, did not
answer these amazing epistles; but, having basked in their
unconscious humour, sent them on to Aunt Barbara. Weekly reports
were sent by Lady Ashbridge's nurse to his father, and Michael had
nothing whatever to add to these. His fear of him had given place
to a quiet contempt, which he did not care to think about, and
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certainly did not care to express.
Every now and then Lady Ashbridge had what Michael thought of as a
good hour or two, when she went back to her content and childlike
joy in his presence, and it was clear, when presently she came
downstairs as he still lingered in the garden, reading the daily
paper in the sun, that one of these better intervals had visited
her. She, too, it appeared, felt the waving of the magic wand of
spring, and she noted the signs of it with a joy that was
infinitely pathetic.
"My dear," she said, "what a beautiful morning! Is it wise to sit
out of doors without your hat, Michael? Shall not I go and fetch
it for you? No? Then let us sit here and talk. It is spring, is
it not? Look how the birds are collecting twigs for their nests! I
wonder how they know that the time has come round again. Sweet
little birds! How bold and merry they are."
She edged her way a little nearer him, so that her shoulder leaned
on his arm.
"My dear, I wish you were going to nest, too," she said. "I
wonder--do you think I have been ill-natured and unkind to your
Sylvia, and that makes her not come to see me now? I do remember
being vexed at her for not wanting to marry you, and perhaps I
talked unkindly about her. I am sorry, for my being cross to her
will do no good; it will only make her more unwilling than ever to
marry a man who has such an unpleasant mamma. Will she come to see
me again, do you think, if I ask her?"
These good hours were too rare in their appearances and swift in
their vanishings to warrant the certainty that she would feel the
same this afternoon, and Michael tried to turn the subject.
"Ah, we shall have to think about that, mother," he said. "Look,
there is a quarrel going on between those two sparrows. They both
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want the same straw."
She followed his pointing finger, easily diverted.
"Oh, I wish they would not quarrel," she said. "It is so sad and
stupid to quarrel, instead of being agreeable and pleasant. I do
not like them to do that. There, one has flown away! And see, the
crocuses are coming up. Indeed it is spring. I should like to see
the country to-day. If you are not busy, Michael, would you take
me out into the country? We might go to Richmond Park perhaps, for
MICHAEL
141
that is in the opposite direction from Ashbridge, and look at the
deer and the budding trees. Oh, Michael, might we take lunch with
us, and eat it out of doors? I want to enjoy as much as I can of
this spring day."
She clung closer to Michael.
"Everything seems so fragile, dear," she whispered. "Everything
may break. . . . Sometimes I am frightened."
The little expedition was soon moving, after a slight altercation
between Lady Ashbridge and her nurse, whom she wished to leave
behind in order to enjoy Michael's undiluted society. But Miss
Baker, who had already spoken to Michael, telling him she was not
quite happy in her mind about her patient, was firm about
accompanying them, though she obligingly effaced herself as far as
possible by taking the box-seat by the chauffeur as they drove
down, and when they arrived, and Michael and his mother strolled
about in the warm sunshine before lunch, keeping carefully in the
background, just ready to come if she was wanted. But indeed it
seemed as if no such precautions were necessary, for never had Lady
Ashbridge been more amenable, more blissfully content in her son's
companionship. The vernal hour, that first smell of the
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rejuvenated earth, as it stirred and awoke from its winter sleep
had reached her no less than it had reached the springing grass and
the heart of buried bulbs, and never perhaps in all her life had
she been happier than on that balmy morning of early March. Here
the stir of spring that had crept across miles of smoky houses to
the gardens behind Curzon Street, was more actively effervescent,
and the "bare, leafless choirs" of the trees, which had been empty
of song all winter, were once more resonant with feathered
worshippers. Through the tussocks of the grey grass of last year
were pricking the vivid shoots of green, and over the grove of
young birches and hazel the dim, purple veil of spring hung
mistlike. Down by the water-edge of the Penn ponds they strayed,
where moor-hens scuttled out of rhododendron bushes that overhung
the lake, and hurried across the surface of the water, half
swimming, half flying, for the shelter of some securer retreat.
There, too, they found a plantation of willows, already in bud with
soft moleskin buttons, and a tortoiseshell butterfly, evoked by the
sun from its hibernation, settled on one of the twigs, opening and
shutting its diapered wings, and spreading them to the warmth to
thaw out the stiffness and inaction of winter. Blackbirds fluted
in the busy thickets, a lark shot up near them soaring and singing
till it became invisible in the luminous air, a suspended carol in
the blue, and bold male chaffinches, seeking their mates with
twittered songs, fluttered with burr of throbbing wings. All the
promise of spring was there--dim, fragile, but sure, on this day of
days, this pearl that emerged from the darkness and the stress of
winter, iridescent with the tender colours of the dawning year.
They lunched in the open motor, Miss Baker again obligingly
removing herself to the box seat, and spreading rugs on the grass
sat in the sunshine, while Lady Ashbridge talked or silently
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watched Michael as he smoked, but always with a smile. The one
little note of sadness which she had sounded when she said she was
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frightened lest everything should break, had not rung again, and
yet all day Michael heard it echoing somewhere dimly behind the
song of the wind and the birds, and the shoots of growing trees.
It lurked in the thickets, just eluding him, and not presenting
itself to his direct gaze; but he felt that he saw it out of the
corner of his eye, only to lose it when he looked at it. And yet
for weeks his mother had never seemed so well: the cloud had lifted
off her this morning, and, but for some vague presage of trouble
that somehow haunted his mind, refusing to be disentangled, he
could have believed that, after all, medical opinion might be at
fault, and that, instead of her passing more deeply into the
shadows as he had been warned was inevitable, she might at least
maintain the level to which she had returned to-day. All day she
had been as she was before the darkness and discontent of those
last weeks had come upon her: he who knew her now so well could
certainly have affirmed that she had recovered the serenity of a
month ago. It was so much, so tremendously much that she should do
this, and if only she could remain as she had been all day, she
would at any rate be happy, happier, perhaps, than she had
consciously been in all the stifled years which had preceded this.
Nothing else at the moment seemed to matter except the preservation
to her of such content, and how eagerly would he have given all the
service that his young manhood had to offer, if by that he could
keep her from going further into the bewildering darkness that he
had been told awaited her.
There was some little trouble, though no more than the shadow of a
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passing cloud, when at last he said that they must be getting back
to town, for the afternoon was beginning to wane. She besought him
for five minutes more of sitting here in the sunshine that was
still warm, and when those minutes were over, she begged for yet
another postponement. But then the quiet imposition of his will
suddenly conquered her, and she got up.
"My dear, you shall do what you like with me," she said, "for you
have given me such a happy day. Will you remember that, Michael?
It has been a nice day. And might we, do you think, ask Miss Falbe
to come to tea with us when we get back? She can but say 'no,' and
if she comes, I will be very good and not vex her."
As she got back into the motor she stood up for a moment, her vague
blue eyes scanning the sky, the trees, the stretch of sunlit park.
"Good-bye, lake, happy lake and moor-hens," she said. "Good-bye,
trees and grass that are growing green again. Good-bye, all
pretty, peaceful things."
Michael had no hesitation in telephoning to Sylvia when they got
back to town, asking her if she could come and have tea with his
mother, for the gentle, affectionate mood of the morning still
lasted, and her eagerness to see Sylvia was only equalled by her
eagerness to be agreeable to her. He was greedy, whenever it could
be done, to secure a pleasure for his mother, and this one seemed
in her present mood a perfectly safe one. Added to that impulse,
in itself sufficient, there was his own longing to see her again,
MICHAEL
143
that thirst that never left him, and soon after they had got back
to Curzon Street Sylvia was with them, and, as before, in
preparation for a long visit, she had taken off her hat. To-day
she divested herself of it without any suggestion on Lady
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Ashbridge's part, and this immensely pleased her.
"Look, Michael," she said. "Miss Falbe means to stop a long time.
That is sweet of her, is it not? She is not in such a hurry to get
away today. Sugar, Miss Falbe? Yes, I remember you take sugar and
milk, but no cream. Well, I do think this is nice!"
Sylvia had seen neither mother nor son for a couple of weeks, and
her eyes coming fresh to them noticed much change in them both. In
Lady Ashbridge this change, though marked, was indefinable enough:
she seemed to the girl to have somehow gone much further off than
she had been before; she had faded, become indistinct. It was
evident that she found, except when she was talking to Michael, a
far greater difficulty in expressing herself, the channels of
communication, as it were, were getting choked. . . . With
Michael, the change was easily stated, he looked terribly tired,
and it was evident that the strain of these weeks was telling
heavily on him. And yet, as Sylvia noticed with a sudden sense of
personal pride in him, not one jot of his patient tenderness for
his mother was abated. Tired as he was, nervous, on edge, whenever
he dealt with her, either talking to her, or watching for any
little attention she might need, his face was alert with love. But
she noticed that when the footman brought in tea, and in arranging
the cups let a spoon slip jangling from its saucer, Michael jumped
as if a bomb had gone off, and under his breath said to the man,
"You clumsy fool!" Little as the incident was, she, knowing
Michael's courtesy and politeness, found it significant, as bearing
on the evidence of his tired face. Then, next moment his mother
said something to him, and instantly his love transformed and
irradiated it.
To-day, more than ever before, Lady Ashbridge seemed to exist only
through him. As Sylvia knew, she had been for the last few weeks
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constantly disagreeable to him; but she wondered whether this
exacting, meticulous affection was not harder to bear. Yet
Michael, in spite of the nervous strain which now showed itself so
clearly, seemed to find no difficulty at all in responding to it.
It might have worn his nerves to tatters, but the tenderness and
love of him passed unhampered through the frayed communications,
for it was he himself who was brought into play. It was of that
Michael, now more and more triumphantly revealed, that Sylvia felt
so proud, as if he had been a possession, an achievement wholly
personal to her. He was her Michael--it was just that which was
becoming evident, since nothing else would account for her claim of
him, unconsciously whispered by herself to herself.
It was not long before Lady Ashbridge's nurse appeared, to take her
upstairs to rest. At that her patient became suddenly and
unaccountably agitated: all the happy content of the day was wiped
off her mind. She clung to Michael.
"No, no, Michael," she said, "they mustn't take me away. I know
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144
they are going to take me away from you altogether. You mustn't
leave me."
Nurse Baker came towards her.
"Now, my lady, you mustn't behave like that," she said. "You know
you are only going upstairs to rest as usual before dinner. You
will see Lord Comber again then."
She shrank from her, shielding herself behind Michael's shoulder.
"No, Michael, no!" she repeated. "I'm going to be taken away from
you. And look, Miss--ah, my dear, I have forgotten your name--
look, she has got no hat on. She was going to stop with me a long
time. Michael, must I go?"
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Michael saw the nurse looking at her, watching her with that quiet
eye of the trained attendant.
Then she spoke to Michael.
"Well, if Lord Comber will just step outside with me," she said,
"we'll see if we can arrange for you to stop a little longer."
"And you'll come back, Michael," said she.
Michael saw that the nurse wanted to say something to him, and with
infinite gentleness disentangled the clinging of Lady Ashbridge's
hand.
"Why, of course I will," he said. "And won't you give Miss Falbe
another cup of tea?"
Lady Ashbridge hesitated a moment.
"Yes, I'll do that," she said. "And by the time I've done that you
will be back again, won't you?"
Michael followed the nurse from the room, who closed the door
without shutting it.
"There's something I don't like about her this evening," she said.
"All day I have been rather anxious. She must be watched very
carefully. Now I want you to get her to come upstairs, and I'll
try to make her go to bed."
Michael felt his mouth go suddenly dry.
"What do you expect?" he said.
"I don't expect anything, but we must be prepared. A change comes
very quickly."
Michael nodded, and they went back together.
"Now, mother darling," he said, "up you go with Nurse Baker.
MICHAEL
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You've been out all day, and you must have a good rest before
dinner. Shall I come up and see you soon?"
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A curious, sly look came into Lady Ashbridge's face.
"Yes, but where am I going to?" she said. "How do I know Nurse
Baker will take me to my own room?"
"Because I promise you she will," said Michael.
That instantly reassured her. Mood after mood, as Michael saw,
were passing like shadows over her mind.
"Ah, that's enough!" she said. "Good-bye, Miss--there! the name's
gone again! But won't you sit here and have a talk to Michael, and
let him show you over the house to see if you like it against the
time-- Oh, Michael said I mustn't worry you about that. And won't
you stop and have dinner with us, and afterwards we can sing."
Michael put his arm around her.
"We'll talk about that while you're resting," he said. "Don't keep
Nurse Baker waiting any longer, mother."
She nodded and smiled.
"No, no; mustn't keep anybody waiting," she said. "Your father
taught me to be punctual."
When they had left the room together, Sylvia turned to Michael.
"Michael, my dear," she said, "I think you are--well, I think you
are Michael."
She saw that at the moment he was not thinking of her at all, and
her heart honoured him for that.
"I'm anxious about my mother to-night," he said. "She has been so--
I suppose you must call it--well all day, but the nurse isn't easy
about her."
Suddenly all his fears and his fatigue and his trouble looked out
of his eyes.
"I'm frightened," he said, "and it's so unutterably feeble of me.
And I'm tired: you don't know how tired, and try as I may I feel
that all the time it is no use. My mother is slipping, slipping
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away."
"But, my dear, no wonder you are tired," she said. "Michael, can't
anybody help? It isn't right you should do everything."
He shook his head, smiling.
"They can't help," he said. "I'm the only person who can help her.
And I--"
MICHAEL
146
He stood up, bracing mind and body.
"And I'm so brutally proud of it," he said. "She wants me. Well,
that's a lot for a son to be able to say. Sylvia, I would give
anything to keep her."
Still he was not thinking of her, and knowing that, she came close
to him and put her arm in his. She longed to give him some feeling
of comradeship. She could be sisterly to him over this without
suggesting to him what she could not be to him. Her instinct had
divined right, and she felt the answering pressure of his elbow
that acknowledged her sympathy, welcomed it, and thought no more
about it.
"You are giving everything to keep her," she said. "You are giving
yourself. What further gift is there, Michael?"
He kept her arm close pressed by him, and she knew by the frankness
of that holding caress he was thinking of her still either not at
all, or, she hoped, as a comrade who could perhaps be of assistance
to courage and clear-sightedness in difficult hours. She wanted to
be no more than that to him just now; it was the most she could do
for him, but with a desire, the most acute she had ever felt for
him, she wanted him to accept that--to take her comradeship as he
would have surely taken her brother's. Once, in the last intimate
moments they had had together, he had refused to accept that
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attitude from her--had felt it a relationship altogether
impossible. She had seen his point of view, and recognised the
justice of the embarrassment. Now, very simply but very eagerly,
she hoped, as with some tugging strain, that he would not reject
it. She knew she had missed this brother, who had refused to be
brother to her. But he had been about his own business, and he had
been doing his own business, with a quiet splendour that drew her
eyes to him, and as they stood there, thus linked, she wondered if
her heart was following. . . . She had seen, last December, how
reasonable it was of him to refuse this domestic sort of intimacy
with her; now, she found herself intensely longing that he would
not persist in his refusal.
Suddenly Michael awoke to the fact of her presence, and abruptly he
moved away from her.
"Thanks, Sylvia," he said. "I know I have your--your good wishes.
But--well, I am sure you understand."
She understood perfectly well. And the understanding of it cut her
to the quick.
"Have you got any right to behave like that to me, Michael?" she
asked. "What have I done that you should treat me quite like
that?"
He looked at her, completely recalled in mind to her alone. All
the hopes and desires of the autumn smote him with encompassing
blows.
MICHAEL
147
"Yes, every right," he said. "I wasn't heeding you. I only
thought of my mother, and the fact that there was a very dear
friend by me. And then I came to myself: I remembered who the
friend was."
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They stood there in silence, apart, for a moment. Then Michael
came closer. The desire for human sympathy, and that the sympathy
he most longed for, gripped him again.
"I'm a brute," he said. "It was awfully nice of you to--to offer
me that. I accept it so gladly. I'm wretchedly anxious."
He looked up at her.
"Take my arm again," he said.
She felt the crook of his elbow tighten again on her wrist. She
had not known before how much she prized that.
"But are you sure you are right in being anxious, Mike?" she asked.
"Isn't it perhaps your own tired nerves that make you anxious?"
"I don't think so," he said. "I've been tired a long time, you
see, and I never felt about my mother like this. She has been so
bright and content all day, and yet there were little lapses, if
you understand. It was as if she knew: she said good-bye to the
lake and the jolly moor-hens and the grass. And her nurse thinks
so, too. She called me out of the room just now to tell me
that. . . . I don't know why I should tell you these depressing
things."
"Don't you?" she asked. "But I do. It's because you know I care.
Otherwise you wouldn't tell me: you couldn't."
For a moment the balance quavered in his mind between Sylvia the
beloved and Sylvia the friend. It inclined to the friend.
"Yes, that's why," he said. "And I reproach myself, you know. All
these years I might, if I had tried harder, have been something to
my mother. I might have managed it. I thought--at least I felt--
that she didn't encourage me. But I was a beast to have been
discouraged. And now her wanting me has come just when it isn't
her unclouded self that wants me. It's as if--as if it had been
raining all day, and just on sunset there comes a gleam in the
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west. And so soon after it's night."
"You made the gleam," said Sylvia.
"But so late; so awfully late."
Suddenly he stood stiff, listening to some sound which at present
she did not hear. It sounded a little louder, and her ears caught
the running of footsteps on the stairs outside. Next moment the
door opened, and Lady Ashbridge's maid put in a pale face.
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148
"Will you go to her ladyship, my lord?" she said. "Her nurse wants
you. She told me to telephone to Sir James."
Sylvia moved with him, not disengaging her arm, towards the door.
"Michael, may I wait?" she said. "You might want me, you know.
Please let me wait."
Lady Ashbridge's room was on the floor above, and Michael ran up
the intervening stairs three at a time. He knocked and entered and
wondered why he had been sent for, for she was sitting quietly on
her sofa near the window. But he noticed that Nurse Baker stood
very close to her. Otherwise there was nothing that was in any way
out of the ordinary.
"And here he is," said the nurse reassuringly as he entered.
Lady Ashbridge turned towards the door as Michael came in, and when
he met her eyes he knew why he had been sent for, why at this
moment Sir James was being summoned. For she looked at him not
with the clouded eyes of affection, not with the mother-spirit
striving to break through the shrouding trouble of her brain, but
with eyes of blank non-recognition. She saw him with the bodily
organs of her vision, but the picture of him was conveyed no
further: there was a blank wall behind her eyes.
Michael did not hesitate. It was possible that he still might be
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something to her, that he, his presence, might penetrate.
"But you are not resting, mother," he said. "Why are you sitting
up? I came to talk to you, as I said I would, while you rested."
Suddenly into those blank, irresponsive eyes there leaped
recognition. He saw the pupils contract as they focused themselves
on him, and hand in hand with recognition there leaped into them
hate. Instantly that was veiled again. But it had been there, and
now it was not banished; it lurked behind in the shadows, crouching
and waiting.
She answered him at once, but in a voice that was quite toneless.
It seemed like that of a child repeating a lesson which it had
learned by heart, and could be pronounced while it was thinking of
something quite different.
"I was waiting till you came, my dear," she said. "Now I will lie
down. Come and sit by me, Michael."
She watched him narrowly while she spoke, then gave a quick glance
at her nurse, as if to see that they were not making signals to
each other. There was an easy chair just behind her head, and as
Michael wheeled it up near her sofa, he looked at the nurse. She
moved her hand slightly towards the left, and interpreting this, he
moved the chair a little to the left, so that he would not sit, as
he had intended, quite close to the sofa.
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149
"And you enjoyed your day in the country, mother?" asked Michael.
She looked at him sideways and slowly. Then again, as if
recollecting a task she had committed to memory, she answered.
"Yes, so much," she said. "All the trees and the birds and the
sunshine. I enjoyed them so much."
She paused a moment.
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"Bring your chair a little closer, my darling," she said. "You are
so far off. And why do you wait, nurse? I will call you if I want
you."
Michael felt one moment of sickening spiritual terror. He
understood quite plainly why Nurse Baker did not want him to go
near to his mother, and the reason of it gave him this pang, not of
nervousness but of black horror, that the sane and the sensitive
must always feel when they are brought intimately in contact with
some blind derangement of instinct in those most nearly allied to
them. Physically, on the material plane, he had no fear at all.
He made a movement, grasping the arm of his chair, as if to wheel
it closer, but he came actually no nearer her.
"Why don't you go away, nurse?" said Lady Ashbridge, "and leave my
son and me to talk about our nice day in the country?"
Nurse Baker answered quite naturally.
"I want to talk, too, my lady," she said. "I went with you and
Lord Comber. We all enjoyed it together."
It seemed to Michael that his mother made some violent effort
towards self-control. He saw one of her hands that were lying on
her knee clench itself, so that the knuckles stood out white.
"Yes, we will all talk together, then," she said. "Or--er--shall I
have a little doze first? I am rather sleepy with so much pleasant
air. And you are sleepy, too, are you not, Michael? Yes, I see
you look sleepy. Shall we have a little nap, as I often do after
tea? Then, when I am fresh again, you shall come back, nurse, and
we will talk over our pleasant day."
When he entered the room, Michael had not quite closed the door,
and now, as half an hour before, he heard steps on the stairs. A
moment afterwards his mother heard them too.
"What is that?" she said. "Who is coming now to disturb me, just
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when I wanted to have a nap?"
There came a knock at the door. Nurse Baker did not move her head,
but continued watching her patient, with hands ready to act.
"Come in," she said, not looking round.
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150
Lady Ashbridge's face was towards the door. As Sir James entered,
she suddenly sprang up, and in her right hand that lay beside her
was a knife, which she had no doubt taken from the tea-table when
she came upstairs. She turned swiftly towards Michael, and stabbed
at him with it.
"It's a trap," she cried. "You've led me into a trap. They are
going to take me away."
Michael had thrown up his arm to shield his head. The blow fell
between shoulder and elbow, and he felt the edge of the knife grate
on his bone.
And from deep in his heart sprang the leaping fountains of
compassion and love and yearning pity.
CHAPTER XII
Michael was sitting in the big studio at the Falbes' house late one
afternoon at the end of June, and the warmth and murmur of the
full-blown summer filled the air. The day had so far declined that
the rays of the sun, level in its setting, poured slantingly in
through the big window to the north, and shining through the
foliage of the plane-trees outside made a diaper of rosy
illuminated spots and angled shadows on the whitewashed wall. As
the leaves stirred in the evening breeze, this pattern shifted and
twinkled; now, as the wind blew aside a bunch of foliage, a lake of
rosy gold would spring up on the wall; then, as the breath of
movement died, the green shadows grew thicker again faintly
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stirring. Through the window to the south, which Hermann had
caused to be cut there, since the studio was not used for painting
purposes, Michael could see into the patch of high-walled garden,
where Mrs. Falbe was sitting in a low basket chair, completely
absorbed in a book of high-born and ludicrous adventures. She had
made a mild attempt when she found that Michael intended to wait
for Sylvia's return to entertain him till she came; but, with a
little oblique encouragement, remarking on the beauty and warmth of
the evening, and the pleasure of sitting out of doors, Michael had
induced her to go out again, and leave him alone in the studio,
free to live over again that which, twenty-four hours ago, had
changed life for him.
He reconstructed it as he sat on the sofa and dwelt on the pearl-
moments of it. Just this time yesterday he had come in and found
Sylvia alone. She had got up, he remembered, to give him greeting,
and just opposite the fireplace they had come face to face. She
held in her hand a small white rose which she had plucked in the
tiny garden here in the middle of London. It was not a very fine
specimen, but it was a rose, and she had said in answer to his
depreciatory glance: "But you must see it when I have washed it.
One has to wash London flowers."
Then . . . the miracle happened. Michael, with the hand that had
just taken hers, stroked a petal of this prized vegetable, with no
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thought in his mind stronger than the thoughts that had been
indigenous there since Christmas. As his finger first touched the
rim of the town-bred petals, undersized yet not quite lacking in
"rose-quality," he had intended nothing more than to salute the
flower, as Sylvia made her apology for it. "One has to wash London
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flowers." But as he touched it he looked up at her, and the quiet,
usual song of his thoughts towards her grew suddenly loud and
stupefyingly sweet. It was as if from the vacant hive-door the
bees swarmed. In her eyes, as they met his, he thought he saw an
expectancy, a welcome, and his hand, instead of stroking the rose-
petals, closed on the rose and on the hand that held it, and kept
them close imprisoned and strongly gripped. He could not remember
if he had spoken any word, but he had seen that in her face which
rendered all speech unnecessary, and, knowing in the bones and the
blood of him that he was right, he kissed her. And then she had
said, "Yes, Michael."
His hand still was tight on hers that held the crumpled rose, and
when he opened it, lover-like, to stroke and kiss it, there was a
spot of blood in the palm of it, where a rose-thorn had pricked
her, just one drop of Sylvia's blood. As he kissed it, he had
wiped it away with the tip of his tongue between his lips, and she
smiling had said, "Oh, Michael, how silly!"
They had sat together on the sofa where this afternoon he sat alone
waiting for her. Every moment of that half hour was as distinct as
the outline of trees and hills just before a storm, and yet it was
still entirely dream-like. He knew it had happened, for nothing
but the happening of it would account now for the fact of himself;
but, though there was nothing in the world so true, there was
nothing so incredible. Yet it was all as clean-cut in his mind as
etched lines, and round each line sprang flowers and singing birds.
For a long space there was silence after they had sat down, and
then she said, "I think I always loved you, Michael, only I didn't
know it. . . ." Thereafter, foolish love talk: he had claimed a
superiority there, for he had always loved her and had always known
it. Much time had been wasted owing to her ignorance . . . she
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ought to have known. But all the time that existed was theirs now.
In all the world there was no more time than what they had. The
crumpled rose had its petals rehabilitated, the thorn that had
pricked her was peeled off. They wondered if Hermann had come in
yet. Then, by some vague process of locomotion, they found
themselves at the piano, and with her arm around his neck Sylvia
has whispered half a verse of the song of herself. . . .
They became a little more definite over lover-confessions. Michael
had, so to speak, nothing to confess: he had loved all along--he
had wanted her all along; there never had been the least pretence
or nonsense about it. Her path was a little more difficult to
trace, but once it had been traversed it was clear enough. She had
liked him always; she had felt sister-like from the moment when
Hermann brought him to the house, and sister-like she had continued
to feel, even when Michael had definitely declared there was "no
thoroughfare" there. She had missed that relationship when it
stopped: she did not mind telling him that now, since it was
abandoned by them both; but not for the world would she have
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confessed before that she had missed it. She had loved being asked
to come and see his mother, and it was during those visits that she
had helped to pile the barricade across the "sister-thoroughfare"
with her own hands. She began to share Michael's sense of the
impossibility of that road. They could not walk down it together,
for they had to be either more or less to each other than that.
And, during these visits, she had begun to understand (and her face
a little hid itself) what Michael's love meant. She saw it
manifested towards his mother; she was taught by it; she learned
it; and, she supposed, she loved it. Anyhow, having seen it, she
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could not want Michael as a brother any longer, and if he still
wanted anything else, she supposed (so she supposed) that some time
he would mention that fact. Yes: she began to hope that he would
not be very long about it. . . .
Michael went over this very deliberately as he sat waiting for her
twenty-four hours later. He rehearsed this moment and that over
and over again: in mind he followed himself and Sylvia across to
the piano, not hurrying their steps, and going through the verse of
the song she sang at the pace at which she actually sang it. And,
as he dreamed and recollected, he heard a little stir in the quiet
house, and Sylvia came.
They met just as they met yesterday in front of the fireplace.
"Oh, Michael, have you been waiting long?" she said.
"Yes, hours, or perhaps a couple of minutes. I don't know."
"Ah, but which? If hours, I shall apologise, and then excuse
myself by saying that you must have come earlier than you intended.
If minutes I shall praise myself for being so exceedingly
punctual."
"Minutes, then," said he. "I'll praise you instead. Praise is
more convincing if somebody else does it."
"Yes, but you aren't somebody else. Now be sensible. Have you
done all the things you told me you were going to do?"
"Yes."
Sylvia released her hands from his.
"Tell me, then," she said. "You've seen your father?"
There was no cloud on Michael's face. There was such sunlight
where his soul sat that no shadow could fall across it.
"Oh, yes, I saw him," he said.
He captured Sylvia's hand again.
"And what is more he saw me, so to speak," he said. "He realised
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that I had an existence independent of him. I used to be a--a sort
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of clock to him; he could put its hands to point to any hour he
chose. Well, he has realised--he has really--that I am ticking
along on my own account. He was quite respectful, not only to me,
which doesn't matter, but to you--which does." Michael laughed, as
he plaited his fingers in with hers.
"My father is so comic," he said, "and unlike most great humourists
his humour is absolutely unconscious. He was perfectly well aware
that I meant to marry you, for I told him that last Christmas,
adding that you did not mean to marry me. So since then I think
he's got used to you. Used to you--fancy getting used to you!"
"Especially since he had never seen me," said the girl.
"That makes it less odd. Getting used to you after seeing you
would be much more incredible. I was saying that in a way he had
got used to you, just as he's got used to my being a person, and
not a clock on his chimney-piece, and what seems to have made so
much difference is what Aunt Barbara told him last night, namely,
that your mother was a Tracy. Sylvia, don't let it be too much for
you, but in a certain far-away manner he realises that you are 'one
of us.' Isn't he a comic? He's going to make the best of you, it
appears. To make the best of you! You can't beat that, you know.
In fact, he told me to ask if he might come and pay his respects to
your mother to-morrow.
"And what about my singing, my career?" she asked.
Michael laughed again.
"He was funny about that also," he said. "My father took it
absolutely for granted that having made this tremendous social
advance, you would bury your past, all but the Tracy part of it, as
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if it had been something disgraceful which the exalted Comber
family agreed to overlook."
"And what did you say?"
"I? Oh, I told him that, of course, you would do as you pleased
about that, but that for my part I should urge you most strongly to
do nothing of the kind."
"And he?"
"He got four inches taller. What is so odd is that as long as I
never opposed my father's wishes, as long as I was the clock on the
chimney piece, I was terrified at him. The thought of opposing
myself to him made my knees quake. But the moment I began doing
so, I found there was nothing to be frightened at."
Sylvia got up and began walking up and down the long room.
"But what am I to do about it, Michael?" she asked. "Oh, I blush
when I think of a conversation I had with Hermann about you, just
before Christmas, when I knew you were going to propose to me. I
said that I could never give up my singing. Can you picture the
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self-importance of that? Why, it doesn't seem to me to matter two
straws whether I do or not. Naturally, I don't want to earn my
living by it any more, but whether I sing or not doesn't matter.
And even as the words are in my mouth I try to imagine myself not
singing any more, and I can't. It's become part of me, and while I
blush to think of what I said to Hermann, I wonder whether it's not
true."
She came and sat down by him again.
"I believe you have got enough artistic instinct to understand
that, Michael," she said, "and to know what a tremendous help it is
to one's art to be a professional, and to be judged seriously. I
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suppose that, ideally, if one loves music as I do one ought to be
able to do one's very best, whether one is singing professionally
or not, but it is hardly possible. Why, the whole difference
between amateurs and professionals is that amateurs sing charmingly
and professionals just sing. Only they sing as well as they
possibly can, not only because they love it, but because if they
don't they will be dropped on to, and if they continue not singing
their best, will lose their place which they have so hardly won. I
can see myself, perhaps, not singing at all, literally never
opening my lips in song again, but I can't see myself coming down
to the Drill Hall at Brixton, extremely beautifully dressed, with
rows of pearls, and arriving rather late, and just singing
charmingly. It's such a spur to know that serious musicians judge
one's performance by the highest possible standard. It's so
relaxing to think that one can easily sing well enough, that one
can delight ninety-nine hundredths of the audience without any real
effort. I could sing 'The Lost Chord' and move the whole Drill
Hall at Brixton to tears. But there might be one man there who
knew, you or Hermann or some other, and at the end he would just
shrug his shoulders ever so slightly, and I would wish I had never
been born."
She paused a moment.
"I'll not sing any more at all, ever," she said, "or I must sing to
those who will take me seriously and judge me ruthlessly. To sing
just well enough to please isn't possible. I'll do either you
like."
Mrs. Falbe strayed in at this moment with her finger in her book,
but otherwise as purposeless as a wandering mist.
"I was afraid it might be going to get chilly," she remarked.
"After a hot day there is often a cool evening. Will you stop and
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dine, Lord--I mean, Michael?"
"Please; certainly!" said Michael.
"Then I hope there will be something for you to eat. Sylvia, is
there something to eat? No doubt you will see to that, darling. I
shall just rest upstairs for a little before dinner, and perhaps
finish my book. So pleased you are stopping."
MICHAEL
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She drifted towards the studio door, in thistledown fashion
catching at corners a little, and then moving smoothly on again,
talking gently half to herself, half to the others.
"And Hermann's not in yet, but if Lord--I mean, Michael, is going
to stop here till dinnertime, it won't matter whether Hermann comes
in in time to dress or not, as Michael is not dressed either. Oh,
there is the postman's knock! What a noise! I am not expecting
any letters."
The knock in question, however, proved to be Hermann, who, as was
generally the case, had forgotten his latchkey. He ran into his
mother at the studio door, and came and sat down, regardless of
whether he was wanted or not, between the two on the sofa, and took
an arm of each.
"I probably intrude," he said, "but such is my intention. I've
just seen Lady Barbara, who says that the shock has not been too
much for Mike's father. That is a good thing; she says he is
taking nourishment much as usual. I suppose I oughtn't to jest on
so serious a subject, but I took my cue from Lady Barbara. It
appears that we have blue blood too, Sylvia, and we must behave
more like aristocrats. A Tracy in the time of King John flirted,
if no more, with a Comber. And what about your career, Sylvia?
Are you going to continue to urge your wild career, or not? I ask
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with a purpose, as Blackiston proposes we should give a concert
together in the third week in July. The Queen's Hall is vacant one
afternoon, and he thinks we might sing and play to them. I'm on if
you are. It will be about the last concert of the season, too, so
we shall have to do our best. Otherwise we, or I, anyhow, will
start again in the autumn with a black mark. By the way, are you
going to start again in the autumn? It wouldn't surprise me one
bit to hear that you and Mike had been talking about just that."
"Don't be too clever to live, Hermann," said Sylvia.
"I don't propose to die, if you mean that. Oh, Blackiston had
another suggestion also. He wanted to know if we would consider
making a short tour in Germany in the autumn. He says that the
beloved Fatherland is rather disposed to be interested in us. He
thinks we should have good audiences at Leipzig, and so on.
There's a tendency, he says, to recognise poor England, a cordial
intention, anyhow. I said that in your case there might be
domestic considerations which-- But I think I shall go in any
case. Lord, fancy playing in Germany to Germans again. Fancy
being listened to by a German audience; fancy if they approved."
Michael leaned forward, putting his elbow into Hermann's chest.
Early December had already been mentioned as a date for their
marriage, and as a pre-nuptial journey, this seemed to him a plan
ecstatically ideal.
"Yes, Sylvia," he said. "The answer is yes. I shall come with
you, you know. I can see it; a triumphal procession, you two
making noises, and me listening. A month's tour, Hermann. Middle
of October till middle of November. Yes, yes."
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All his tremendous pride in her singing, dormant for the moment
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under the wonder of his love, rose to the surface. He knew what
her singing meant to her, and, from their conversation together
just now, how keen was her eagerness for the strict judgment of
those who knew, how she loved that austere pinnacle of daylight.
Here was an ideal opportunity; never yet, since she had won her
place as a singer, had she sung in Germany, that Mecca of the
musical artist, and in her case, the land from which she sprung.
Had the scheme implied a postponement of their marriage, he would
still have declared himself for it, for he unerringly felt for her
in this; he knew intuitively what delicious beckoning this held for
her.
"Yes, yes," he repeated, "I must have you do that, Sylvia. I don't
care what Hermann wants or what you want. I want it."
"Yes, but who's to do the playing and the singing?" asked Hermann.
"Isn't it a question, perhaps, for--"
Michael felt quite secure about the feelings of the other two, and
rudely interrupted.
"No," he said. "It's a question for me. When the Fatherland hears
that I am there it will no doubt ask me to play and sing instead of
you two. Lord! Fancy marrying into such a distinguished family.
I burst with pride!"
It required, then, little debate, since all three were agreed,
before Hermann was empowered with authority to make arrangements,
and they remained simultaneously talking till Mrs. Falbe, again
drifting in, announced that the bell for dinner had sounded some
minutes before. She had her finger in the last chapter of "Lady
Ursula's Ordeal," and laid it face downwards on the table to resume
again at the earliest possible moment. This opportunity was
granted her when, at the close of dinner, coffee and the evening
paper came in together. This Hermann opened at the middle page.
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"Hallo!" he said. "That's horrible! The Heir Apparent of the
Austrian Emperor has been murdered at Serajevo. Servian plot,
apparently."
"Oh, what a dreadful thing," said Mrs. Falbe, opening her book.
"Poor man, what had he done?"
Hermann took a cigarette, frowning.
"It may be a match--" he began.
Mrs. Falbe diverted her attention from "Lady Ursula" for a moment.
"They are on the chimney-piece, dear," she said, thinking he spoke
of material matches.
Michael felt that Hermann saw something, or conjectured something
ominous in this news, for he sat with knitted brow reading, and
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letting the match burn down.
"Yes; it seems that Servian officers are implicated," he said.
"And there are materials enough already for a row between Austria
and Servia without this."
"Those tiresome Balkan States," said Mrs. Falbe, slowly immersing
herself like a diving submarine in her book. "They are always
quarrelling. Why doesn't Austria conquer them all and have done
with it?"
This simple and striking solution of the whole Balkan question was
her final contribution to the topic, for at this moment she became
completely submerged, and cut off, so to speak, from the outer
world, in the lucent depths of Lady Ursula.
Hermann glanced through the other pages, and let the paper slide to
the floor.
"What will Austria do?" he said. "Supposing she threatens Servia
in some outrageous way and Russia says she won't stand it? What
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then?"
Michael looked across to Sylvia; he was much more interested in the
way she dabbled the tips of her hands in the cool water of her
finger bowl than in what Hermann was saying. Her fingers had an
extraordinary life of their own; just now they were like a group of
maidens by a fountain. . . . But Hermann repeated the question to
him personally.
"Oh, I suppose there will be a lot of telegraphing," he said, "and
perhaps a board of arbitration. After all, one expected a European
conflagration over the war in the Balkan States, and again over
their row with Turkey. I don't believe in European conflagrations.
We are all too much afraid of each other. We walk round each other
like collie dogs on the tips of their toes, gently growling, and
then quietly get back to our own territories and lie down again."
Hermann laughed.
"Thank God, there's that wonderful fire-engine in Germany ready to
turn the hose on conflagrations."
"What fire-engine?" asked Michael.
"The Emperor, of course. We should have been at war ten times over
but for him."
Sylvia dried her finger-tips one by one.
"Lady Barbara doesn't quite take that view of him, does she, Mike?"
she asked.
Michael suddenly remembered how one night in the flat Aunt Barbara
had suddenly turned the conversation from the discussion of cognate
topics, on hearing that the Falbes were Germans, only to resume it
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again when they had gone.
"I don't fancy she does," he said. "But then, as you know, Aunt
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Barbara has original views on every subject."
Hermann did not take the possible hint here conveyed to drop the
matter.
"Well, then, what do you think about him?" he asked.
Michael laughed.
"My dear Hermann," he said, "how often have you told me that we
English don't pay the smallest attention to international politics.
I am aware that I don't; I know nothing whatever about them."
Hermann shook off the cloud of preoccupation that so unaccountably,
to Michael's thinking, had descended on him, and walked across to
the window.
"Well, long may ignorance be bliss," he said. "Lord, what a divine
evening! 'Uber allen gipfeln ist Ruhe.' At least, there is peace
on the only summits visible, which are house roofs. There's not a
breath of wind in the trees and chimney-pots; and it's hot, it's
really hot."
"I was afraid there was going to be a chill at sunset," remarked
Mrs. Falbe subaqueously.
"Then you were afraid even where no fear was, mother darling," said
he, "and if you would like to sit out in the garden I'll take a
chair out for you, and a table and candles. Let's all sit out;
it's a divine hour, this hour after sunset. There are but a score
of days in the whole year when the hour after sunset is warm like
this. It's such a pity to waste one indoors. The young people"--
and he pointed to Sylvia and Michael--"will gaze into each other's
hearts, and Mamma's will beat in unison with Lady Ursula's, and I
will sit and look at the sky and become profoundly sentimental,
like a good German."
Hermann and Michael bestirred themselves, and presently the whole
little party had encamped on chairs placed in an oasis of rugs
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(this was done at the special request of Mrs. Falbe, since Lady
Ursula had caught a chill that developed into consumption) in the
small, high-walled garden. Beyond at the bottom lay the road along
the embankment and the grey-blue Thames, and the dim woods of
Battersea Park across the river. When they came out, sparrows were
still chirping in the ivy on the studio wall and in the tall angle-
leaved planes at the bottom of the little plot, discussing, no
doubt, the domestic arrangements for their comfort during the
night. But presently a sudden hush fell upon them, and their
shrillness was sharp no more against the drowsy hum of the city.
The sky overhead was of veiled blue, growing gradually more
toneless as the light faded, and was unflecked by any cloud, except
where, high in the zenith, a fleece of rosy vapour still caught the
light of the sunken sun, and flamed with the soft radiance of some
MICHAEL
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snow-summit. Near it there burned a molten planet, growing
momentarily brighter as the night gathered and presently beginning
to be dimmed again as a tawny moon three days past the full rose in
the east above the low river horizon. Occasionally a steamer
hooted from the Thames and the noise of churned waters sounded, or
the crunch of a motor's wheels, or the tapping of the heels of a
foot passenger on the pavement below the garden wall. But such
evidence of outside seemed but to accentuate the perfect peace of
this secluded little garden where the four sat: the hour and the
place were cut off from all turmoil and activities: for a moment
the stream of all their lives had flowed into a backwater, where it
rested immobile before the travel that was yet to come. So it
seemed to Michael then, and so years afterwards it seemed to him,
as vividly as on this evening when the tawny moon grew golden as it
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climbed the empty heavens, dimming the stars around it.
What they talked of, even though it was Sylvia who spoke, seemed
external to the spirit of the hour. They seemed to have reached a
point, some momentary halting-place, where speech and thought even
lay outside, and the need of the spirit was merely to exist and be
conscious of its existence. Sometimes for a moment his past life
with its self-repression, its mute yearnings, its chrysalis
stirrings, formed a mist that dispersed again, sometimes for a
moment in wonder at what the future held, what joys and troubles,
what achings, perhaps, and anguishes, the unknown knocked
stealthily at the door of his mind, but then stole away unanswered
and unwelcome, and for that hour, while Mrs. Falbe finished with
Lady Ursula, while Hermann smoked and sighed like a sentimental
German, and while he and Sylvia sat, speaking occasionally, but
more often silent, he was in some kind of Nirvana for which its own
existence was everything. Movement had ceased: he held his breath
while that divine pause lasted.
When it was broken, there was no shattering of it: it simply died
away like a long-drawn chord as Mrs. Falbe closed her book.
"She died," she said, "I knew she would."
Hermann gave a great shout of laughter.
"Darling mother, I'm ever so much obliged," he said. "We had to
return to earth somehow. Where has everybody else been?"
Michael stirred in his chair.
"I've been here," he said.
"How dull! Oh, I suppose that's not polite to Sylvia. I've been
in Leipzig and in Frankfort and in Munich. You and Sylvia have
been there, too, I may tell you. But I've also been here: it's
jolly here."
His sentimentalism had apparently not quite passed from him.
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"Ah, we've stolen this hour!" he said. "We've taken it out of the
hurly-burly and had it to ourselves. It's been ripping. But I'm
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back from the rim of the world. Oh, I've been there, too, and
looked out over the immortal sea. Lieber Gott, what a sea, where
we all come from, and where we all go to! We're just playing on
the sand where the waves have cast us up for one little hour. Oh,
the pleasant warm sand and the play! How I love it."
He got out of his chair stretching himself, as Mrs. Falbe passed
into the house, and gave a hand on each side to Michael and Sylvia.
"Ah, it was a good thing I just caught that train at Victoria
nearly a year ago," he said. "If I had been five seconds later, I
should have missed it, and so I should have missed my friend, and
Sylvia would have missed hers, and Mike would have missed his. As
it is, here we all are. Behold the last remnant of my German
sentimentality evaporates, but I am filled with a German desire for
beer. Let us come into the studio, liebe Kinder, and have beer and
music and laughter. We cannot recapture this hour or prolong it.
But it was good, oh, so good! I thank God for this hour."
Sylvia put her hand on her brother's arm, looking at him with just
a shade of anxiety.
"Nothing wrong, Hermann?" she asked.
"Wrong? There is nothing wrong unless it is wrong to be happy.
But we have to go forward: my only quarrel with life is that. I
would stop it now if I could, so that time should not run on, and
we should stay just as we are. Ah, what does the future hold? I
am glad I do not know."
Sylvia laughed.
"The immediate future holds beer apparently," she said. "It also
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hold a great deal of work for you and me, if it is to hold Leipzig
and Frankfort and Munich. Oh, Hermann, what glorious days!"
They walked together into the studio, and as they entered Hermann
looked back over her into the dim garden. Then he pulled down the
blind with a rattle.
"'Move on there!' said the policeman," he remarked. "And so they
moved on."
The news about the murder of the Austrian Grand Duke, which, for
that moment at dinner, had caused Hermann to peer with apprehension
into the veil of the future, was taken quietly enough by the public
in general in England. It was a nasty incident, no doubt, and the
murder having been committed on Servian soil, the pundits of the
Press gave themselves an opportunity for subsequently saying that
they were right, by conjecturing that Austria might insist on a
strict inquiry into the circumstances, and the due punishment of
not only the actual culprits but of those also who perhaps were
privy to the plot. But three days afterwards there was but little
uneasiness; the Stock Exchanges of the European capitals--those
highly sensitive barometers of coming storm--were but slightly
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161
affected for the moment, and within a week had steadied themselves
again. From Austria there came no sign of any unreasonable demand
which might lead to trouble with Servia, and so with Slavonic
feeling generally, and by degrees that threatening of storm, that
sudden lightning on the horizon passed out of the mind of the
public. There had been that one flash, no more, and even that had
not been answered by any growl of thunder; the storm did not at
once move up and the heavens above were still clear and sunny by
day, and starry-kirtled at night. But here and there were those
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who, like Hermann on the first announcement of the catastrophe,
scented trouble, and Michael, going to see Aunt Barbara one
afternoon early in the second week of July, found that she was one
of them.
"I distrust it all, my dear," she said to him. "I am full of
uneasiness. And what makes me more uneasy is that they are taking
it so quietly at the Austrian Embassy and at the German. I dined
at one Embassy last night and at the other only a few nights ago,
and I can't get anybody--not even the most indiscreet of the
Secretaries--to say a word about it."
"But perhaps there isn't a word to be said," suggested Michael.
"I can't believe that. Austria cannot possibly let an incident of
that sort pass. There is mischief brewing. If she was merely
intending to insist--as she has every right to do--on an inquiry
being held that should satisfy reasonable demands for justice, she
would have insisted on that long ago. But a fortnight has passed
now, and still she makes no sign. I feel sure that something is
being arranged. Dear me, I quite forgot, Tony asked me not to talk
about it. But it doesn't matter with you."
"But what do you mean by something being arranged?" asked Michael.
She looked round as if to assure herself that she and Michael were
alone.
"I mean this: that Austria is being persuaded to make some
outrageous demand, some demand that no independent country could
possibly grant."
"But who is persuading her?" asked Michael.
"My dear, you--like all the rest of England--are fast asleep. Who
but Germany, and that dangerous monomaniac who rules Germany? She
has long been wanting war, and she has only been delaying the
dawning of Der Tag, till all her preparations were complete, and
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she was ready to hurl her armies, and her fleet too, east and west
and north. Mark my words! She is about ready now, and I believe
she is going to take advantage of her opportunity."
She leaned forward in her chair.
"It is such an opportunity as has never occurred before," she said,
"and in a hundred years none so fit may occur again. Here are we--
England--on the brink of civil war with Ireland and the Home
MICHAEL
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Rulers; our hands are tied, or, rather, are occupied with our own
troubles. Anyhow, Germany thinks so: that I know for a fact among
so much that is only conjecture. And perhaps she is right. Who
knows whether she may not be right, and that if she forces on war
whether we shall range ourselves with our allies?"
Michael laughed.
"But aren't you piling up a European conflagration rather in a
hurry, Aunt Barbara?" he asked.
"There will be hurry enough for us, for France and Russia and
perhaps England, but not for Germany. She is never in a hurry: she
waits till she is ready."
A servant brought in tea and Lady Barbara waited till he had left
the room again.
"It is as simple as an addition sum," she said, "if you grant the
first step, that Austria is going to make some outrageous demand of
Servia. What follows? Servia refuses that demand, and Austria
begins mobilisation in order to enforce it. Servia appeals to
Russia, invokes the bond of blood, and Russia remonstrates with
Austria. Her representations will be of no use: you may stake all
you have on that; and eventually, since she will be unable to draw
back she, too, will begin in her slow, cumbrous manner, hampered by
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those immense distances and her imperfect railway system, to
mobilise also. Then will Germany, already quite prepared, show her
hand. She will demand that Russia shall cease mobilisation, and
again will Russia refuse. That will set the military machinery of
France going. All the time the governments of Europe will be
working for peace, all, that is, except one, which is situated at
Berlin."
Michael felt inclined to laugh at this rapid and disastrous
sequence of ominous forebodings; it was so completely
characteristic of Aunt Barbara to take the most violent possible
view of the situation, which no doubt had its dangers. And what
Michael felt was felt by the enormous majority of English people.
"Dear Aunt Barbara, you do get on quick," he said.
"It will happen quickly," she said. "There is that little cloud in
the east like a man's hand today, and rather like that mailed fist
which our sweet peaceful friend in Germany is so fond of talking
about. But it will spread over the sky, I tell you, like some
tropical storm. France is unready, Russia is unready; only Germany
and her marionette, Austria, the strings of which she pulls, is
ready."
"Go on prophesying," said Michael.
"I wish I could. Ever since that Sarajevo murder I have thought of
nothing else day and night. But how events will develop then I
can't imagine. What will England do? Who knows? I only know what
Germany thinks she will do, and that is, stand aside because she
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can't stir, with this Irish mill-stone round her neck. If Germany
thought otherwise, she is perfectly capable of sending a dozen
submarines over to our naval manoeuvres and torpedoing our
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battleships right and left."
Michael laughed outright at this.
"While a fleet of Zeppelins hovers over London, and drops bombs on
the War Office and the Admiralty," he suggested.
But Aunt Barbara was not in the least diverted by this.
"And if England stands aside," she said, "Der Tag will only dawn a
little later, when Germany has settled with France and Russia. We
shall live to see Der Tag, Michael, unless we are run over by
motor-buses, and pray God we shall see it soon, for the sooner the
better. Your adorable Falbes, now, Sylvia and Hermann. What do
they think of it?"
"Hermann was certainly rather--rather upset when he read of the
Sarajevo murders," he said. "But he pins his faith on the German
Emperor, whom he alluded to as a fire-engine which would put out
any conflagration."
Aunt Barbara rose in violent incredulity.
"Pish and bosh!" she remarked. "If he had alluded to him as an
incendiary bomb, there would have been more sense in his simile."
"Anyhow, he and Sylvia are planning a musical tour in Germany in
the autumn," said Michael.
"'It's a long, long way to Tipperary,'" remarked Aunt Barbara
enigmatically.
"Why Tipperary?" asked Michael.
"Oh, it's just a song I heard at a music-hall the other night.
There's a jolly catchy tune to it, which has rung in my head ever
since. That's the sort of music I like, something you can carry
away with you. And your music, Michael?"
"Rather in abeyance. There are--other things to think about."
Aunt Barbara got up.
"Ah, tell me more about them," she said. "I want to get this
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nightmare out of my head. Sylvia, now. Sylvia is a good cure for
the nightmare. Is she kind as she is fair, Michael?"
Michael was silent for a moment. Then he turned a quiet, radiant
face to her.
"I can't talk about it," he said. "I can't get accustomed to the
wonder of it."
MICHAEL
164
"That will do. That's a completely satisfactory account. But go
on."
Michael laughed.
"How can I?" he asked. "There's no end and no beginning. I can't
'go on' as you order me about a thing like that. There is Sylvia;
there is me."
"I must be content with that, then," she said, smiling.
"We are," said Michael.
Lady Barbara waited a moment without speaking.
"And your mother?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"She still refuses to see me," he said. "She still thinks it was I
who made the plot to take her away and shut her up. She is often
angry with me, poor darling, but--but you see it isn't she who is
angry: it's just her malady."
"Yes, my dear," said Lady Barbara. "I am so glad you see it like
that."
"How else could I see it? It was my real mother whom I began to
know last Christmas, and whom I was with in town for the three
months that followed. That's how I think of her: I can't think of
her as anything else."
"And how is she otherwise?"
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Again he shook his head.
"She is wretched, though they say that all she feels is dim and
veiled, that we mustn't think of her as actually unhappy.
Sometimes there are good days, when she takes a certain pleasure in
her walks and in looking after a little plot of ground where she
gardens. And, thank God, that sudden outburst when she tried to
kill me seems to have entirely passed from her mind. They don't
think she remembers it at all. But then the good days are rare,
and are growing rarer, and often now she sits doing nothing at all
but crying."
Aunt Barbara laid her hand on him.
"Oh, my dear," she said.
Michael paused for a moment, his brown eyes shining.
"If only she could come back just for a little to what she was in
January," he said. "She was happier then, I think, than she ever
was before. I can't help wondering if anyhow I could have
prolonged those days, by giving myself up to her more completely."
MICHAEL
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"My dear, you needn't wonder about that," said Aunt Barbara. "Sir
James told me that it was your love and nothing else at all that
gave her those days."
Michael's lips quivered.
"I can't tell you what they were to me," he said, "for she and I
found each other then, and we both felt we had missed each other so
much and so long. She was happy then, and I, too. And now
everything has been taken from her, and still, in spite of that, my
cup is full to overflowing."
"That's how she would have it, Michael," said Barbara.
"Yes, I know that. I remind myself of that."
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Again he paused.
"They don't think she will live very long," he said. "She is
getting physically much weaker. But during this last week or two
she has been less unhappy, they think. They say some new change
may come any time: it may be only the great change--I mean her
death; but it is possible before that that her mind will clear
again. Sir James told me that occasionally happened, like--like a
ray of sunlight after a stormy day. It would be good if that
happened. I would give almost anything to feel that she and I were
together again, as we were."
Barbara, childless, felt something of motherhood. Michael's
simplicity and his sincerity were already known to her, but she had
never yet known the strength of him. You could lean on Michael.
In his quiet, undemonstrative way he supported you completely, as a
son should; there was no possibility of insecurity. . . .
"God bless you, my dear," she said.
CHAPTER XIII
One close thundery morning about a week later, Michael was sitting
at his piano in his shirtsleeves, busy practising. He was aware
that at the other end of the room the telephone was calling for
him, but it seemed to be of far greater importance at the minute to
finish the last page of one of the Bach fugues, than to attend to
what anybody else might have to say to him. Then it suddenly
flashed across him that it might be Sylvia who wanted to speak to
him, or that there might be news about his mother, and his fingers
leaped from the piano in the middle of a bar, and he ran and slid
across the parquet floor.
But it was neither of these, and compared to them it was a case of
"only" Hermann who wanted to see him. But Hermann, it appeared,
wanted to see him urgently, and, if he was in (which he was) would
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be with him in ten minutes.
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But the Bach thread was broken, and Michael, since it was not worth
while trying to mend it for the sake of these few minutes, sat down
by the open window, and idly took up the morning paper, which as
yet he had not opened, since he had hurried over breakfast in order
to get to his piano. The music announcements on the outside page
first detained him, and seeing that the concert by the Falbes,
which was to take place in five or six days, was advertised, he
wondered vaguely whether it was about that that Hermann wanted to
see him, and, if so, why he could not have said whatever he had to
say on the telephone, instead of cutting things short with the curt
statement that he wished to see him urgently, and would come round
at once. Then remembering that Francis had been playing cricket
for the Guards yesterday, he turned briskly over to the last page
of sporting news, and found that his cousin had distinguished
himself by making no runs at all, but by missing two expensive
catches in the deep field. From there, after a slight inspection
of a couple of advertisement columns, he worked back to the middle
leaf, where were leaders and the news of nations and the movements
of kings. All this last week he had scanned such items with a
growing sense of amusement in the recollection of Hermann's
disquiet over the Sarajevo murders, and Aunt Barbara's more
detailed and vivid prognostications of coming danger, for nothing
more had happened, and he supposed--vaguely only, since the affair
had begun to fade from his mind--that Austria had made inquiries,
and that since she was satisfied there was no public pronouncement
to be made.
The hot breeze from the window made the paper a little unmanageable
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for a moment, but presently he got it satisfactorily folded, and a
big black headline met his eye. A half-column below it contained
the demands which Austria had made in the Note addressed to the
Servian Government. A glance was sufficient to show that they were
framed in the most truculent and threatening manner possible to
imagine. They were not the reasonable proposals that one State had
a perfect right to make of another on whose soil and with the
connivance of whose subjects the murders had been committed; they
were a piece of arbitrary dictation, a threat levelled against a
dependent and an inferior.
Michael had read them through twice with a growing sense of
uneasiness at the thought of how Lady Barbara's first anticipations
had been fulfilled, when Hermann came in. He pointed to the paper
Michael held.
"Ah, you have seen it," he said. "Perhaps you can guess what I
wanted to see you about."
"Connected with the Austrian Note?" asked Michael.
"Yes."
"I have not the vaguest idea."
Hermann sat down on the arm of his chair.
MICHAEL
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"Mike, I'm going back to Germany to-day," he said. "Now do you
understand? I'm German."
"You mean that Germany is at the back of this?"
"It is obvious, isn't it? Those demands couldn't have been made
without the consent of Austria's ally. And they won't be granted.
Servia will appeal to Russia. And . . . and then God knows what
may happen. In the event of that happening, I must be in my
Fatherland ready to serve, if necessary."
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"You mean you think it possible you will go to war with Russia?"
asked Michael.
"Yes, I think it possible, and, if I am right, if there is that
possibility, I can't be away from my country."
"But the Emperor, the fire-engine whom you said would quench any
conflagration?"
"He is away yachting. He went off after the visit of the British
fleet to Kiel. Who knows whether before he gets back, things may
have gone too far? Can't you see that I must go? Wouldn't you go
if you were me? Suppose you were in Germany now, wouldn't you
hurry home?"
Michael was silent, and Hermann spoke again.
"And if there is trouble with Russia, France, I take it, is bound
to join her. And if France joins her, what will England do?"
The great shadow of the approaching storm fell over Michael, even
as outside the sultry stillness of the morning grew darker.
"Ah, you think that?" asked Michael.
Hermann put his hand on Michael's shoulder.
"Mike, you're the best friend I have," he said, "and soon, please
God, you are going to marry the girl who is everything else in the
world to me. You two make up my world really--you two and my
mother, anyhow. No other individual counts, or is in the same
class. You know that, I expect. But there is one other thing, and
that's my nationality. It counts first. Nothing, nobody, not even
Sylvia or my mother or you can stand between me and that. I expect
you know that also, for you saw, nearly a year ago, what Germany is
to me. Perhaps I may be quite wrong about it all--about the
gravity, I mean, of the situation, and perhaps in a few days I may
come racing home again. Yes, I said 'home,' didn't I? Well, that
shows you just how I am torn in two. But I can't help going."
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Hermann's hand remained on his shoulder gently patting it. To
Michael the world, life, the whole spirit of things had suddenly
grown sinister, of the quality of nightmare. It was true that all
the ground of this ominous depression which had darkened round him,
was conjectural and speculative, that diplomacy, backed by the
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horror of war which surely all civilised nations and responsible
govermnents must share, had, so far from saying its last, not yet
said its first word; that the wits of all the Cabinets of Europe
were at this moment only just beginning to stir themselves so as to
secure a peaceful solution; but, in spite of this, the darkness and
the nightmare grew in intensity. But as to Hermann's determination
to go to Germany, which made this so terribly real, since it was
beginning to enter into practical everyday life, he had neither
means nor indeed desire to combat it. He saw perfectly clearly
that Hermann must go.
"I don't want to dissuade you," he said, "not only because it would
be useless, but because I am with you. You couldn't do otherwise,
Hermann."
"I don't see that I could. Sylvia agrees too."
A terrible conjecture flashed through Michael's mind.
"And she?" he asked.
"She can't leave my mother, of course," said Hermann, "and, after
all, I may be on a wild goose chase. But I can't risk being unable
to get to Germany, if--if the worst happens."
The ghost of a smile played round his mouth for a moment.
"And I'm not sure that she could leave you, Mike," he added.
Somehow this, though it gave Michael a moment of intensest relief
to know that Sylvia remained, made the shadow grow deeper,
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accentuated the lines of the storm which had begun to spread over
the sky. He began to see as nightmare no longer, but as stern and
possible realities, something of the unutterable woe, the
divisions, the heart-breaks which menaced.
"Hermann, what do you think will happen?" he said. "It is
incredible, unfaceable--"
The gentle patting on his shoulder, that suddenly and poignantly
reminded him of when Sylvia's hand was there, ceased for a moment,
and then was resumed.
"Mike, old boy," said Hermann, "we've got to face the unfaceable,
and believe that the incredible is possible. I may be all wrong
about it, and, as I say, in a few days' time I may come racing
back. But, on the other hand, this may be our last talk together,
for I go off this afternoon. So let's face it."
He paused a moment.
"It may be that before long I shall be fighting for my Fatherland,"
he said. "And if there is to be fighting, it may be that Germany
will before long be fighting England. There I shall be on one
side, and, since naturally you will go back into the Guards, you
will be fighting on the other. I shall be doing my best to kill
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Englishmen, whom I love, and they will be doing their best to kill
me and those of my blood. There's the horror of it, and it's that
we must face. If we met in a bayonet charge, Mike, I should have
to do my best to run you through, and yet I shouldn't love you one
bit the less, and you must know that. Or, if you ran me through, I
shall have to die loving you just the same as before, and hoping
you would live happy, for ever and ever, as the story-books say,
with Sylvia."
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"Hermann, don't go," said Michael suddenly.
"Mike, you didn't mean that," he said.
Michael looked at him for a moment in silence.
"No, it is unsaid," he replied.
Hermann looked round as the clock on the chimney-piece chimed.
"I must be going," he said, "I needn't say anything to you about
Sylvia, because all I could say is in your heart already. Well,
we've met in this jolly world, Mike, and we've been great friends.
Neither you nor I could find a greater friend than we've been to
each other. I bless God for this last year. It's been the
happiest in my life. Now what else is there? Your music: don't
ever be lazy about your music. It's worth while taking all the
pains you can about it. Lord! do you remember the evening when I
first tried your Variations? . . . Let me play the last one now.
I want something jubilant. Let's see, how does it go?"
He held his hands, those long, slim-fingered hands, poised for a
moment above the keys, then plunged into the glorious riot of the
full chords and scales, till the room rang with it. The last chord
he held for a moment, and then sprang up.
"Ah, that's good," he said. "And now I'm going to say good-bye,
and go without looking round."
"But might I see you off this afternoon?" asked Michael.
"No, please don't. Station partings are fussy and disagreeable. I
want to say good-bye to you here in your quiet room, just as I
shall say goodbye to Sylvia at home. Ah, Mike, yes, both hands and
smiling. May God give us other meetings and talks and
companionship and years of love, my best of friends. Good-bye."
Then, as he had said, he walked to the door without looking round,
and next moment it had closed behind him.
Throughout the next week the tension of the situation grew ever
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greater, strained towards the snapping-point, while the little
cloud, the man's hand, which had arisen above the eastern horizon
grew and overspread the heavens in a pall that became ever more
black and threatening. For a few days yet it seemed that perhaps
even now the cataclysm might be averted, but gradually, in spite of
MICHAEL
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all the efforts of diplomacy to loosen the knot, it became clear
that the ends of the cord were held in hands that did not mean to
release their hold till it was pulled tight. Servia yielded to
such demands as it was possible for her to grant as an independent
State; but the inflexible fingers never abated one jot of their
strangling pressure. She appealed to Russia, and Russia's
remonstrance fell on deaf ears, or, rather, on ears that had
determined not to hear. From London and Paris came proposals for
conference, for arbitration, with welcome for any suggestion from
the other side which might lead to a peaceful solution of the
disputed demands, already recognised by Europe as a firebrand
wantonly flung into the midst of dangerous and inflammable
material. Over that burning firebrand, preventing and warding off
all the eager hands that were stretched to put it out, stood the
figure of the nation at whose bidding it had been flung there.
Gradually, out of the thunder-clouds and gathering darkness,
vaguely at first and then in definite and menacing outline, emerged
the inexorable, flint-like face of Germany, whose figure was clad
in the shining armour so well known in the flamboyant utterances of
her War Lord, which had been treated hitherto as mere irresponsible
utterances to be greeted with a laugh and a shrugged shoulder.
Deep and patient she had always been, and now she believed that the
time had come for her patience to do its perfect work. She had
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bided long for the time when she could best fling that lighted
brand into the midst of civilisation, and she believed she had
calculated well. She cared nothing for Servia nor for her ally.
On both her frontiers she was ready, and now on the East she heeded
not the remonstrance of Russia, nor her sincere and cordial
invitation to friendly discussion. She but waited for the step
that she had made inevitable, and on the first sign of Russian
mobilisation she, with her mobilisation ready to be completed in a
few days, peremptorily demanded that it should cease. On the
Western frontier behind the Rhine she was ready also; her armies
were prepared, cannon fodder in uncountable store of shells and
cartridges was prepared, and in endless battalions of men, waiting
to be discharged in one bull-like rush, to overrun France, and
holding the French armies, shattered and dispersed, with a mere
handful of her troops, to hurl the rest at Russia.
The whole campaign was mathematically thought out. In a few months
at the outside France would be lying trampled down and bleeding;
Russia would be overrun; already she would be mistress of Europe,
and prepared to attack the only country that stood between her and
world-wide dominion, whose allies she would already have reduced to
impotence. Here she staked on an uncertainty: she could not
absolutely tell what England's attitude would be, but she had the
strongest reason for hoping that, distracted by the imminence of
civil strife, she would be unable to come to the help of her allies
until the allies were past helping.
For a moment only were seen those set stern features mad for war;
then, with a snap, Germany shut down her visor and stood with sword
unsheathed, waiting for the horror of the stupendous bloodshed
which she had made inevitable. Her legions gathered on the Eastern
front threatening war on Russia, and thus pulling France into the
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spreading conflagration and into the midst of the flame she stood
ready to cast the torn-up fragments of the treaty that bound her to
respect the neutrality of Belgium.
All this week, while the flames of the flung fire-brand began to
spread, the English public waited, incredulous of the inevitable.
Michael, among them, found himself unable to believe even then that
the bugles were already sounding, and that the piles of shells in
their wicker-baskets were being loaded on to the military
ammunition trains. But all the ordinary interests in life, all the
things that busily and contentedly occupied his day, one only
excepted, had become without savour. A dozen times in the morning
he would sit down to his piano, only to find that he could not
think it worth while to make his hands produce these meaningless
tinkling sounds, and he would jump up to read the paper over again,
or watch for fresh headlines to appear on the boards of news-
vendors in the street, and send out for any fresh edition. Or he
would walk round to his club and spend an hour reading the tape
news and waiting for fresh slips to be pinned up. But, through all
the nightmare of suspense and slowly-dying hope, Sylvia remained
real, and after he had received his daily report from the
establishment where his mother was, with the invariable message
that there was no marked change of any kind, and that it was
useless for him to think of coming to see her, he would go off to
Maidstone Crescent and spend the greater part of the day with the
girl.
Once during this week he had received a note from Hermann, written
at Munich, and on the same day she also had heard from him. He had
gone back to his regiment, which was mobilised, as a private, and
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was very busy with drill and duties. Feeling in Germany, he said,
was elated and triumphant: it was considered certain that England
would stand aside, as the quarrel was none of hers, and the nation
generally looked forward to a short and brilliant campaign, with
the occupation of Paris to be made in September at the latest. But
as a postscript in his note to Sylvia he had added:
"You don't think there is the faintest chance of England coming in,
do you? Please write to me fully, and get Mike to write. I have
heard from neither of you, and as I am sure you must have written,
I conclude that letters are stopped. I went to the theatre last
night: there was a tremendous scene of patriotism. The people are
war-mad."
Since then nothing had been heard from him, and to-day, as Michael
drove down to see Sylvia, he saw on the news-boards that Belgium
had appealed to England against the violation of her territory by
the German armies en route for France. Overtures had been made,
asking for leave to pass through the neutral territory: these
Belgium had rejected. This was given as official news. There came
also the report that the Belgian remonstrances would be
disregarded. Should she refuse passage to the German battalions,
that could make no difference, since it was a matter of life and
death to invade France by that route.
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172
Sylvia was out in the garden, where, hardly a month ago, they had
spent that evening of silent peace, and she got up quickly as
Michael came out.
"Ah, my dear," she said, "I am glad you have come. I have got the
horrors. You saw the latest news? Yes? And have you heard again
from Hermann? No, I have not had a word."
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He kissed her and sat down.
"No, I have not heard either," he said. "I expect he is right.
Letters have been stopped."
"And what do you think will be the result of Belgium's appeal?" she
asked.
"Who can tell? The Prime Minister is going to make a statement on
Monday. There have been Cabinet meetings going on all day."
She looked at him in silence.
"And what do you think?" she asked.
Quite suddenly, at her question, Michael found himself facing it,
even as, when the final catastrophe was more remote, he had faced
it with Falbe. All this week he knew he had been looking away from
it, telling himself that it was incredible. Now he discovered that
the one thing he dreaded more than that England should go to war,
was that she should not. The consciousness of national honour, the
thing which, with religion, Englishmen are most shy of speaking
about, suddenly asserted itself, and he found on the moment that it
was bigger than anything else in the world.
"I think we shall go to war," he said. "I don't see personally how
we can exist any more as a nation if we don't. We--we shall be
damned if we don't, damned for ever and ever. It's moral
extinction not to."
She kindled at that.
"Yes, I know," she said, "that's what I have been telling myself;
but, oh, Mike, there's some dreadful cowardly part of me that won't
listen when I think of Hermann, and . . ."
She broke off a moment.
"Michael," she said, "what will you do, if there is war?"
He took up her hand that lay on the arm of his chair.
"My darling, how can you ask?" he said. "Of course I shall go back
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to the army."
For one moment she gave way.
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"No, no," she said. "You mustn't do that."
And then suddenly she stopped.
"My dear, I ask your pardon," she said. "Of course you will. I
know that really. It's only this stupid cowardly part of me that--
that interrupted. I am ashamed of it. I'm not as bad as that all
through. I don't make excuses for myself, but, ah, Mike, when I
think of what Germany is to me, and what Hermann is, and when I
think what England is to me, and what you are! It shan't appear
again, or if it does, you will make allowance, won't you? At least
I can agree with you utterly, utterly. It's the flesh that's weak,
or, rather, that is so strong. But I've got it under."
She sat there in silence a little, mopping her eyes.
"How I hate girls who cry!" she said. "It is so dreadfully feeble!
Look, Mike, there are some roses on that tree from which I plucked
the one you didn't think much of. Do you remember? You crushed it
up in my hand and made it bleed."
He smiled.
"I have got some faint recollection of it," he said.
Sylvia had got hold of her courage again.
"Have you?" she asked. "What a wonderful memory. And that quiet
evening out here next day. Perhaps you remember that too. That
was real: that was a possession that we shan't ever part with."
She pointed with her finger.
"You and I sat there, and Hermann there," she said. "And mother
sat--why, there she is. Mother darling, let's have tea out here,
shall we? I will go and tell them."
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Mrs. Falbe had drifted out in her usual thistledown style, and
shook hands with Michael.
"What an upset it all is," she said, "with all these dreadful
rumours going about that we shall be at war. I fell asleep, I
think, a little after lunch, when I could not attend to my book for
thinking about war."
"Isn't the book interesting?" asked Michael.
"No, not very. It is rather painful. I do not know why people
write about painful things when there are so many pleasant and
interesting things to write about. It seems to me very morbid."
Michael heard something cried in the streets, and at the same
moment he heard Sylvia's step quickly crossing the studio to the
side door that opened on to it. In a minute she returned with a
fresh edition of an evening paper.
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"They are preparing to cross the Rhine," she said.
Mrs. Falbe gave a little sigh.
"I don't know, I am sure," she said, "what you are in such a state
about, Sylvia. Of course the Germans want to get into France the
easiest and quickest way, at least I'm sure I should. It is very
foolish of Belgium not to give them leave, as they are so much the
strongest."
"Mother darling, you don't understand one syllable about it," said
Sylvia.
"Very likely not, dear, but I am very glad we are an island, and
that nobody can come marching here. But it is all a dreadful
upset, Lord--I mean Michael, what with Hermann in Germany, and the
concert tour abandoned. Still, if everything is quiet again by the
middle of October, as I daresay it will be, it might come off after
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all. He will be on the spot, and you and Michael can join him,
though I'm not quite sure if that would be proper. But we might
arrange something: he might meet you at Ostend."
"I'm afraid it doesn't look very likely," remarked Michael mildly.
"Oh, and are you pessimistic too, like Sylvia? Pray don't be
pessimistic. There is a dreadful pessimist in my book, who always
thinks the worst is going to happen."
"And does it?" asked Michael.
"As far as I have got, it does, which makes it all the worse. Of
course I am very anxious about Hermann, but I feel sure he will
come back safe to us. I daresay France will give in when she sees
Germany is in earnest."
Mrs. Falbe pulled the shattered remnants of her mind together. In
her heart of hearts she knew she did not care one atom what might
happen to armies and navies and nations, provided only that she had
a quantity of novels to read, and meals at regular hours. The fact
of being on an island was an immense consolation to her, since it
was quite certain that, whatever happened, German armies (or French
or Soudanese, for that matter) could not march here and enter her
sitting-room and take her books away from her. For years past she
had asked nothing more of the world than that she should be
comfortable in it, and it really seemed not an unreasonable
request, considering at how small an outlay of money all the
comfort she wanted could be secured to her. The thought of war had
upset her a good deal already: she had been unable to attend to her
book when she awoke from her after-lunch nap; and now, when she
hoped to have her tea in peace, and find her attention restored by
it, she found the general atmosphere of her two companions vaguely
disquieting. She became a little more loquacious than usual, with
the idea of talking herself back into a tranquil frame of mind, and
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reassuring to herself the promise of a peaceful future.
"Such a blessing we have a good fleet," she said. "That will make
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us safe, won't it? I declare I almost hate the Germans, though my
dear husband was one himself, for making such a disturbance. The
papers all say it is Germany's fault, so I suppose it must be. The
papers know better than anybody, don't they, because they have
foreign correspondents. That must be a great expense!"
Sylvia felt she could not endure this any longer. It was like
having a raw wound stroked. . . .
"Mother, you don't understand," she said. "You don't appreciate
what is happening. In a day or two England will be at war with
Germany."
Mrs. Falbe's book had slipped from her knee. She picked it up and
flapped the cover once or twice to get rid of dust that might have
settled there.
"But what then?" she said. "It is very dreadful, no doubt, to
think of dear Hermann being with the German army, but we are
getting used to that, are we not? Besides, he told me it was his
duty to go. I do not think for a moment that France will be able
to stand against Germany. Germany will be in Paris in no time, and
I daresay Hermann's next letter will be to say that he has been
walking down the boulevards. Of course war is very dreadful, I
know that. And then Germany will be at war with Russia, too, but
she will have Austria to help her. And as for Germany being at war
with England, that does not make me nervous. Think of our fleet,
and how safe we feel with that! I see that we have twice as many
boats as the Germans. With two to one we must win, and they won't
be able to send any of their armies here. I feel quite comfortable
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again now that I have talked it over."
Sylvia caught Michael's eye for a moment over the tea-urn. She
felt he acquiesced in what she was intending to say.
"That is good, then," she said. "I am glad you feel comfortable
about it, mother dear. Now, will you read your book out here? Why
not, if I fetch you a shawl in case you feel cold?"
Mrs. Falbe turned a questioning eye to the motionless trees and the
unclouded sky.
"I don't think I shall even want a shawl, dear," she said.
"Listen, how the newsboys are calling! is it something fresh, do
you think?"
A moment's listening attention was sufficient to make it known that
the news shouted outside was concerned only with the result of a
county cricket match, and Michael, as well as Sylvia, was conscious
of a certain relief to know that at the immediate present there was
no fresh clang of the bell that was beating out the seconds of
peace that still remained. Just for now, for this hour on Saturday
afternoon, there was a respite: no new link was forged in the
intolerable sequence of events. But, even as he drew breath in
that knowledge, there came the counter-stroke in the sense that
those whose business it was to disseminate the news that would
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176
cause their papers to sell, had just a cricket match to advertise
their wares. Now, when the country and when Europe were on the
brink of a bloodier war than all the annals of history contained,
they, who presumably knew what the public desired to be informed
on, thought that the news which would sell best was that concerned
with wooden bats and leather balls, and strong young men in
flannels. Michael had heard with a sort of tender incredulity Mrs.
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Falbe's optimistic reflections, and had been more than content to
let her rest secure in them; but was the country, the heart of
England, like her? Did it care more for cricket matches, as she
for her book, than for the maintenance of the nation's honour,
whatever that championship might cost? . . . And the cry went on
past the garden-walk. "Fine innings by Horsfield! Result of the
Oval match!"
And yet he had just had his tea as usual, and eaten a slice of
cake, and was now smoking a cigarette. It was natural to do that,
not to make a fuss and refuse food and drink, and it was natural
that people should still be interested in cricket. And at the
moment his attitude towards Mrs. Falbe changed. Instead of pity
and irritation at her normality, he was suddenly taken with a sense
of gratitude to her. It was restful to suspense and jangled nerves
to see someone who went on as usual. The sun shone, the leaves of
the plane-trees did not wither, Mrs. Falbe read her book, the
evening paper was full of cricket news. . . . And then the
reaction from that seized him again. Supposing all the nation was
like that. Supposing nobody cared. . . . And the tension of
suspense strained more tightly than ever.
For the next forty-eight hours, while day and night the telegraph
wires of Europe tingled with momentous questions and grave replies,
while Ministers and Ambassadors met and parted and met again,
rumours flew this way and that like flocks of wild-fowl driven
backwards and forwards, settling for a moment with a stir and
splash, and then with rush of wings speeding back and on again. A
huge coal strike in the northern counties, fostered and financed by
German gold, was supposed to be imminent, and this would put out of
the country's power the ability to interfere. The Irish Home Rule
party, under the same suasion, was said to have refused to call a
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truce. A letter had been received in high quarters from the German
Emperor avowing his fixed determination to preserve peace, and this
was honey to Lord Ashbridge. Then in turn each of these was
contradicted. All thought of the coal strike in this crisis of
national affairs was abandoned; the Irish party, as well as the
Conservatives, were of one mind in backing up the Government, no
matter what postponement of questions that were vital a month ago,
their cohesion entailed; the Emperor had written no letter at all.
But through the nebulous mists of hearsay, there fell solid the
first drops of the imminent storm. Even before Michael had left
Sylvia that afternoon, Germany had declared war on Russia, on
Sunday Belgium received a Note from Berlin definitely stating that
should their Government not grant the passage to the German
battalions, a way should be forced for them. On Monday, finally,
Germany declared war on France also.
The country held its breath in suspense at what the decision of the
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Government, which should be announced that afternoon, should be.
One fact only was publicly known, and that was that the English
fleet, only lately dismissed from its manoeuvres and naval review,
had vanished. There were guard ships, old cruisers and what not,
at certain ports, torpedo-boats roamed the horizons of Deal and
Portsmouth, but the great fleet, the swift forts of sea-power, had
gone, disappearing no one knew where, into the fine weather haze
that brooded over the midsummer sea. There perhaps was an
indication of what the decision would be, yet there was no
certainty. At home there was official silence, and from abroad,
apart from the three vital facts, came but the quacking of rumour,
report after report, each contradicting the other.
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Then suddenly came certainty, a rainbow set in the intolerable
cloud. On Monday afternoon, when the House of Commons met, all
parties were known to have sunk their private differences and to be
agreed on one point that should take precedence of all other
questions. Germany should not, with England's consent, violate the
neutrality of Belgium. As far as England was concerned, all
negotiations were at an end, diplomacy had said its last word, and
Germany was given twenty-four hours in which to reply. Should a
satisfactory answer not be forthcoming, England would uphold the
neutrality she with others had sworn to respect by force of arms.
And at that one immense sigh of relief went up from the whole
country. Whatever now might happen, in whatever horrors of long-
drawn and bloody war the nation might be involved, the nightmare of
possible neutrality, of England's repudiating the debt of honour,
was removed. The one thing worse than war need no longer be
dreaded, and for the moment the future, hideous and heart-rending
though it would surely be, smiled like a land of promise.
Michael woke on the morning of Tuesday, the fourth of August, with
the feeling of something having suddenly roused him, and in a few
seconds he knew that this was so, for the telephone bell in the
room next door sent out another summons. He got straight out of
bed and went to it, with a hundred vague shadows of expectation
crossing his mind. Then he learned that his mother was gravely
ill, and that he was wanted at once. And in less than half an hour
he was on his way, driving swiftly through the serene warmth of the
early morning to the private asylum where she had been removed
after her sudden homicidal outburst in March.
CHAPTER XIV
Michael was sitting that same afternoon by his mother's bedside.
He had learned the little there was to be told him on his arrival
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in the morning; how that half an hour before he had been summoned,
she had had an attack of heart failure, and since then, after
recovering from the acute and immediate danger, she had lain there
all day with closed eyes in a state of but semi-conscious
exhaustion. Once or twice only, and that but for a moment she had
shown signs of increasing vitality, and then sank back into this
stupor again. But in those rare short intervals she had opened her
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eyes, and had seemed to see and recognise him, and Michael thought
that once she had smiled at him. But at present she had spoken no
word. All the morning Lord Ashbridge had waited there too, but
since there was no change he had gone away, saying that he would
return again later, and asking to be telephoned for if his wife
regained consciousness. So, but for the nurse and the occasional
visits of the doctor, Michael was alone with his mother.
In this long period of inactive waiting, when there was nothing to
be done, Michael did not seem to himself to be feeling very
vividly, and but for one desire, namely, that before the end his
mother would come back to him, even if only for a moment, his mind
felt drugged and stupefied. Sometimes for a little it would
sluggishly turn over thoughts about his father, wondering with a
sort of blunt, remote contempt how it was possible for him not to
be here too; but, except for the one great longing that his mother
should cleave to him once more in conscious mind, he observed
rather than felt. The thought of Sylvia even was dim. He knew
that she was somewhere in the world, but she had become for the
present like some picture painted in his mind, without reality.
Dim, too, was the tension of those last days. Somewhere in Europe
was a country called Germany, where was his best friend, drilling
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in the ranks to which he had returned, or perhaps already on his
way to bloodier battlefields than the world had ever dreamed of;
and somewhere set in the seas was Germany's arch-foe, who already
stood in her path with open cannon mouths pointing. But all this
had no real connection with him. From the moment when he had come
into this quiet, orderly room and saw his mother lying on the bed,
nothing beyond those four walls really concerned him.
But though the emotional side of his mind lay drugged and
insensitive to anything outside, he found himself observing the
details of the room where he waited with a curious vividness.
There was a big window opening down to the ground in the manner of
a door on to the garden outside, where a smooth lawn, set with
croquet hoops and edged with bright flower-beds, dozed in the haze
of the August heat. Beyond was a row of tall elms, against which a
copper beech glowed metallically, and somewhere out of sight a
mowing-machine was being used, for Michael heard the click of its
cropping journey, growing fainter as it receded, followed by the
pause as it turned, and its gradual crescendo as it approached
again. Otherwise everything outside was strangely silent; as the
hot hours of midday and early afternoon went by there was no note
of bird-music, nor any sound of wind in the elm-tops. Just a
little breeze stirred from time to time, enough to make the slats
of the half-drawn Venetian blind rattle faintly. Earlier in the
day there had come in from the window the smell of dew-damp earth,
but now that had been sucked up by the sun.
Close beside the window, with her back to the light and facing the
bed, which projected from one of the side walls out into the room,
sat Lady Ashbridge's nurse. She was reading, and the rustle of the
turned page was regular; but regular and constant also were her
glances towards the bed where her patient lay. At intervals she
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put down her book, marking the place with a slip of paper, and came
to watch by the bed for a moment, looking at Lady Ashbridge's face
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and listening to her breathing. Her eye met Michael's always as
she did this, and in answer to his mute question, each time she
gave him a little head-shake, or perhaps a whispered word or two,
that told him there was no change. Opposite the bed was the empty
fireplace, and at the foot of it a table, on which stood a vase of
roses. Michael was conscious of the scent of these every now and
then, and at intervals of the faint, rather sickly smell of ether.
A Japan screen, ornamented with storks in gold thread, stood near
the door and half-concealed the washing-stand. There was a chest
of drawers on one side of the fireplace, a wardrobe with a looking-
glass door on the other, a dressing-table to one side of the
window, a few prints on the plain blue walls, and a dark blue
drugget carpet on the floor; and all these ordinary appurtenances
of a bedroom etched themselves into Michael's mind, biting their
way into it by the acid of his own suspense.
Finally there was the bed where his mother lay. The coverlet of
blue silk upon it he knew was somehow familiar to him, and after
fitful gropings in his mind to establish the association, he
remembered that it had been on the bed in her room in Curzon
Street, and supposed that it had been brought here with others of
her personal belongings. A little core of light, focused on one of
the brass balls at the head of the bed, caught his eye, and he saw
that the sun, beginning to decline, came in under the Venetian
blind. The nurse, sitting in the window, noticed this also, and
lowered it. The thought of Sylvia crossed his brain for a moment;
then he thought of his father; but every train of reflection
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dissolved almost as soon as it was formed, and he came back again
and again to his mother's face.
It was perfectly peaceful and strangely young-looking, as if the
cool, soothing hand of death, which presently would quiet all
trouble for her, had been already at work there erasing the marks
that the years had graven upon it. And yet it was not so much
young as ageless; it seemed to have passed beyond the register and
limitations of time. Sometimes for a moment it was like the face
of a stranger, and then suddenly it would become beloved and
familiar again. It was just so she had looked when she came so
timidly into his room one night at Ashbridge, asking him if it
would be troublesome to him if she sat and talked with him for a
little. The mouth was a little parted for her slow, even
breathing; the corners of it smiled; and yet he was not sure if
they smiled. It was hard to tell, for she lay there quite flat,
without pillows, and he looked at her from an unusual angle.
Sometimes he felt as if he had been sitting there watching for
uncounted years; and then again the hours that he had been here
appeared to have lasted but for a moment, as if he had but looked
once at her.
As the day declined the breeze of evening awoke, rattling the
blind. By now the sun had swung farther west, and the nurse pulled
the blind up. Outside in the bushes in the garden the call of
birds to each other had begun, and a thrush came close to the
window and sang a liquid phrase, and then repeated it. Michael
glanced there and saw the bird, speckle-breasted, with throat that
throbbed with the notes; and then, looking back to the bed, he saw
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that his mother's eyes were open.
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She looked vaguely about the room for a moment, as if she had awoke
from some deep sleep and found herself in an unfamiliar place.
Then, turning her head slightly, she saw him, and there was no
longer any question as to whether her mouth smiled, for all her
face was flooded with deep, serene joy.
He bent towards her and her lips parted.
"Michael, my dear," she said gently.
Michael heard the rustle of the nurse's dress as she got up and
came to the bedside. He slipped from his chair on to his knees, so
that his face was near his mother's. He felt in his heart that the
moment he had so longed for was to be granted him, that she had
come back to him, not only as he had known her during the weeks
that they had lived alone together, when his presence made her so
content, but in a manner infinitely more real and more embracing.
"Have you been sitting here all the time while I slept, dear?" she
asked. "Have you been waiting for me to come back to you?"
"Yes, and you have come," he said.
She looked at him, and the mother-love, which before had been
veiled and clouded, came out with all the tender radiance of
evening sun, with the clear shining after rain.
"I knew you wouldn't fail me, my darling," she said. "You were so
patient with me in the trouble I have been through. It was a
nightmare, but it has gone."
Michael bent forward and kissed her.
"Yes, mother," he said, "it has all gone."
She was silent a moment.
"Is your father here?" she said.
"No; but he will come at once, if you would like to see him."
"Yes, send for him, dear, if it would not vex him to come," she
said; "or get somebody else to send; I don't want you to leave me."
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"I'm not going to," said he.
The nurse went to the door, gave some message, and presently
returned to the other side of the bed. Then Lady Ashbridge spoke
again.
"Is this death?" she asked.
Michael raised his eyes to the figure standing by the bed. She
nodded to him.
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He bent forward again.
"Yes, dear mother," he said.
For a moment her eyes dilated, then grew quiet again, and the smile
returned to her mouth.
"I'm not frightened, Michael," she said, "with you there. It isn't
lonely or terrible."
She raised her head.
"My son!" she said in a voice loud and triumphant. Then her head
fell back again, and she lay with face close to his, and her
eyelids quivered and shut. Her breath came slow and regular, as if
she slept. Then he heard that she missed a breath, and soon after
another. Then, without struggle at all, her breathing ceased. . . .
And outside on the lawn close by the open window the thrush
still sang.
It was an hour later when Michael left, having waited for his
father's arrival, and drove to town through the clear, falling
dusk. He was conscious of no feeling of grief at all, only of a
complete pervading happiness. He could not have imagined so
perfect a close, nor could he have desired anything different from
that imperishable moment when his mother, all trouble past, had
come back to him in the serene calm of love. . . .
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As he entered London he saw the newsboards all placarded with one
fact: England had declared war on Germany.
He went, not to his own flat, but straight to Maidstone Crescent.
With those few minutes in which his mother had known him, the
stupor that had beset his emotions all day passed off, and he felt
himself longing, as he had never longed before, for Sylvia's
presence. Long ago he had given her all that he knew of as
himself; now there was a fresh gift. He had to give her all that
those moments had taught him. Even as already they were knitted
into him, made part of him, so must they be to her. . . . And when
they had shared that, when, like water gushing from a spring she
flooded him, there was that other news which he had seen on the
newsboards that they had to share together.
Sylvia had been alone all day with her mother; but, before Michael
arrived, Mrs. Falbe (after a few more encouraging remarks about war
in general, to the effect that Germany would soon beat France, and
what a blessing it was that England was an island) had taken her
book up to her room, and Sylvia was sitting alone in the deep dusk
of the evening. She did not even trouble to turn on the light, for
she felt unable to apply herself to any practical task, and she
could think and take hold of herself better in the dark. All day
she had longed for Michael to come to her, though she had not cared
to see anybody else, and several times she had rung him up, only to
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find that he was still out, supposedly with his mother, for he had
been summoned to her early that morning, and since then no news had
come of him. Just before dinner had arrived the announcement of
the declaration of war, and Sylvia sat now trying to find some
escape from the encompassing nightmare. She felt confused and
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distracted with it; she could not think consecutively, but only
contemplate shudderingly the series of pictures that presented
themselves to her mind. Somewhere now, in the hosts of the
Fatherland, which was hers also, was Hermann, the brother who was
part of herself. When she thought of him, she seemed to be with
him, to see the glint of his rifle, to feel her heart on his heart,
big with passionate patriotism. She had no doubt that patriotism
formed the essence of his consciousness, and yet by now probably he
knew that the land beloved by him, where he had made his home, was
at war with his own. She could not but know how often his thoughts
dwelled here in the dark quiet studio where she sat, and where so
many days of happiness had been passed. She knew what she was to
him, she and her mother and Michael, and the hosts of friends in
this land which had become his foe. Would he have gone, she asked
herself, if he had guessed that there would be war between the two?
She thought he would, though she knew that for herself she would
have made it as hard as possible for him to do so. She would have
used every argument she could think of to dissuade him, and yet she
felt that her entreaties would have beaten in vain against the
granite of his and her nationality. Dimly she had foreseen this
contingency when, a few days ago, she had asked Michael what he
would do if England went to war, and now that contingency was
realised, and Hermann was even now perhaps on his way to violate
the neutrality of the country for the sake of which England had
gone to war. On the other side was Michael, into whose keeping she
had given herself and her love, and on which side was she? It was
then that the nightmare came close to her; she could not tell, she
was utterly unable to decide. Her heart was Michael's; her heart
was her brother's also. The one personified Germany for her, the
other England. It was as if she saw Hermann and Michael with
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bayonet and rifle stalking each other across some land of sand-
dunes and hollows, creeping closer to each other, always closer.
She felt as if she would have gladly given herself over to an
eternity of torment, if only they could have had one hour more, all
three of them, together here, as on that night of stars and peace
when first there came the news which for the moment had disquieted
Hermann.
She longed as with thirst for Michael to come, and as her solitude
became more and more intolerable, a hundred hideous fancies
obsessed her. What if some accident had happened to Michael, or
what, if in this tremendous breaking of ties that the war entailed,
he felt that he could not see her? She knew that was an
impossibility; but the whole world had become impossible. And
there was no escape. Somehow she had to adjust herself to the
unthinkable; somehow her relations both with Hermann and Michael
had to remain absolutely unshaken. Even that was not enough: they
had to be strengthened, made impregnable.
Then came a knock on the side door of the studio that led into the
street: Michael often came that way without passing through the
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house, and with a sense of relief she ran to it and unlocked it.
And even as he stepped in, before any word of greeting had been
exchanged, she flung herself on him, with fingers eager for the
touch of his solidity. . . .
"Oh, my dear," she said. "I have longed for you, just longed for
you. I never wanted you so much. I have been sitting in the dark
desolate--desolate. And oh! my darling, what a beast I am to think
of nothing but myself. I am ashamed. What of your mother,
Michael?"
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She turned on the light as they walked back across the studio, and
Michael saw that her eyes, which were a little dazzled by the
change from the dark into the light, were dim with unshed tears,
and her hands clung to him as never before had they clung. She
needed him now with that imperative need which in trouble can only
turn to love for comfort. She wanted that only; the fact of him
with her, in this land in which she had suddenly become an alien,
an enemy, though all her friends except Hermann were here. And
instantaneously, as a baby at the breast, she found that all his
strength and serenity were hers.
They sat down on the sofa by the piano, side by side, with hands
intertwined before Michael answered. He looked up at her as he
spoke, and in his eyes was the quiet of love and death.
"My mother died an hour ago," he said. "I was with her, and as I
had longed might happen, she came back to me before she died. For
two or three minutes she was herself. And then she said to me, 'My
son,' and soon she ceased breathing."
"Oh, Michael," she said, and for a little while there was silence,
and in turn it was her presence that he clung to. Presently he
spoke again.
"Sylvia, I'm so frightfully hungry," he said. "I don't think I've
eaten anything since breakfast. May we go and forage?"
"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried. "Yes, let's go and see what there
is."
Instantly she busied herself.
"Hermann left the cellar key on the chimney-piece, Michael," she
said. "Get some wine out, dear. Mother and I don't drink any.
And there's some ham, I know. While you are getting wine, I'll
broil some. And there were some strawberries. I shall have some
supper with you. What a good thought! And you must be famished."
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As they ate they talked perfectly simply and naturally of the
hundred associations which this studio meal at the end of the
evening called up concerning the Sunday night parties. There was
an occasion on which Hermann tried to recollect how to mull beer,
with results that smelled like a brickfield; there was another when
a poached egg had fallen, exploding softly as it fell into the
piano. There was the occasion, the first on which Michael had been
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present, when two eminent actors imitated each other; another when
Francis came and made himself so immensely agreeable. It was after
that one that Sylvia and Hermann had sat and talked in front of the
stove, discussing, as Sylvia laughed to remember, what she would
say when Michael proposed to her. Then had come the break in
Michael's attendances and, as Sylvia allowed, a certain falling-off
in gaiety.
"But it was really Hermann and I who made you gay originally," she
said. "We take a wonderful deal of credit for that."
All this was as completely natural for them as was the impromptu
meal, and soon without effort Michael spoke of his mother again,
and presently afterwards of the news of war. But with him by her
side Sylvia found her courage come back to her; the news itself,
all that it certainly implied, and all the horror that it held, no
longer filled her with the sense that it was impossibly terrible.
Michael did not diminish the awfulness of it, but he gave her the
power of looking out bravely at it. Nor did he shrink from
speaking of all that had been to her so grim a nightmare.
"You haven't heard from Hermann?" he asked.
"No. And I suppose we can't hear now. He is with his regiment,
that's all; nor shall we hear of him till there is peace again."
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She came a little closer to him.
"Michael, I have to face it, that I may never see Hermann again,"
she said. "Mother doesn't fear it, you know. She--the darling--
she lives in a sort of dream. I don't want her to wake from it.
But how can I get accustomed to the thought that perhaps I shan't
see Hermann again? I must get accustomed to it: I've got to live
with it, and not quarrel with it."
He took up her hand, enclosing it in his.
"But, one doesn't quarrel with the big things of life," he said.
"Isn't it so? We haven't any quarrel with things like death and
duty. Dear me, I'm afraid I'm preaching."
"Preach, then," she said.
"Well, it's just that. We don't quarrel with them: they manage
themselves. Hermann's going managed itself. It had to be."
Her voice quivered as she spoke now.
"Are you going?" she asked. "Will that have to be?"
Michael looked at her a moment with infinite tenderness.
"Oh, my dear, of course it will," he said. "Of course, one doesn't
know yet what the War Office will do about the Army. I suppose
it's possible that they will send troops to France. All that
concerns me is that I shall rejoin again if they call up the
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Reserves."
"And they will?"
"Yes, I should think that is inevitable. And you know there's
something big about it. I'm not warlike, you know, but I could not
fail to be a soldier under these new conditions, any more than I
could continue being a soldier when all it meant was to be
ornamental. Hermann in bursts of pride and patriotism used to call
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us toy-soldiers. But he's wrong now; we're not going to be toy-
soldiers any more."
She did not answer him, but he felt her hand press close in the
palm of his.
"I can't tell you how I dreaded we shouldn't go to war," he said.
"That has been a nightmare, if you like. It would have been the
end of us if we had stood aside and seen Germany violate a solemn
treaty."
Even with Michael close to her, the call of her blood made itself
audible to Sylvia. Instinctively she withdrew her hand from his.
"Ah, you don't understand Germany at all," she said. "Hermann
always felt that too. He told me he felt he was talking gibberish
to you when he spoke of it. It is clearly life and death to
Germany to move against France as quickly as possible."
"But there's a direct frontier between the two," said he.
"No doubt, but an impossible one."
Michael frowned, drawing his big eyebrows together.
"But nothing can justify the violation of a national oath," he
said. "That's the basis of civilisation, a thing like that."
"But if it's a necessity? If a nation's existence depends on it?"
she asked. "Oh, Michael, I don't know! I don't know! For a
little I am entirely English, and then something calls to me from
beyond the Rhine! There's the hopelessness of it for me and such
as me. You are English; there's no question about it for you. But
for us! I love England: I needn't tell you that. But can one ever
forget the land of one's birth? Can I help feeling the necessity
Germany is under? I can't believe that she has wantonly provoked
war with you."
"But consider--" said he.
She got up suddenly.
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"I can't argue about it," she said. "I am English and I am German.
You must make the best of me as I am. But do be sorry for me, and
never, never forget that I love you entirely. That's the root fact
between us. I can't go deeper than that, because that reaches to
the very bottom of my soul. Shall we leave it so, Michael, and not
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ever talk of it again? Wouldn't that be best?"
There was no question of choice for Michael in accepting that
appeal. He knew with the inmost fibre of his being that, Sylvia
being Sylvia, nothing that she could say or do or feel could
possibly part him from her. When he looked at it directly and
simply like that, there was nothing that could blur the verity of
it. But the truth of what she said, the reality of that call of
the blood, seemed to cast a shadow over it. He knew beyond all
other knowledge that it was there: only it looked out at him with a
shadow, faint, but unmistakable, fallen across it. But the sense
of that made him the more eagerly accept her suggestion.
"Yes, darling, we'll never speak of it again," he said. "That
would be much wisest."
Lady Ashbridge's funeral took place three days afterwards, down in
Suffolk, and those hours detached themselves in Michael's mind from
all that had gone before, and all that might follow, like a little
piece of blue sky in the midst of storm clouds. The limitations of
man's consciousness, which forbid him to think poignantly about two
things at once, hedged that day in with an impenetrable barrier, so
that while it lasted, and afterwards for ever in memory, it was
unflecked by trouble or anxiety, and hung between heaven and earth
in a serenity of its own.
The coffin lay that night in his mother's bedroom, which was next
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to Michael's, and when he went up to bed he found himself listening
for any sound that came from there. It seemed but yesterday when
he had gone rather early upstairs, and after sitting a minute or
two in front of his fire, had heard that timid knock on the door,
which had meant the opening of a mother's heart to him. He felt it
would scarcely be strange if that knock came again, and if she
entered once more to be with him. From the moment he came
upstairs, the rest of the world was shut down to him; he entered
his bedroom as if he entered a sanctuary that was scented with the
incense of her love. He knew exactly how her knock had sounded
when she came in here that night when first it burned for him: his
ears were alert for it to come again. Once his blind tapped
against the frame of his open window, and, though knowing it was
that, he heard himself whisper--for she could hear his whisper--
"Come in, mother," and sat up in his deep chair, looking towards
the door. But only the blind tapped again, and outside in the
moonlit dusk an owl hooted.
He remembered she liked owls. Once, when they lived alone in
Curzon Street, some noise outside reminded her of the owls that
hooted at Ashbridge--she had imitated their note, saying it sounded
like sleep. . . . She had sat in a chintz-covered chair close to
him when at Christmas she paid him that visit, and now he again
drew it close to his own, and laid his hand on its arm. Petsy II.
had come in with her, and she had hoped that he would not annoy
Michael.
There were steps in the passage outside his room, and he heard a
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little shrill bark. He opened his door and found his mother's maid
there, trying to entice Petsy away from the room next to his. The
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little dog was curled up against it, and now and then he turned
round scratching at it, asking to enter. "He won't come away, my
lord," said the maid; "he's gone back a dozen times to the door."
Michael bent down.
"Come, Petsy," he said, "come to bed in my room."
The dog looked at him for a moment as if weighing his trustworthiness.
Then he got up and, with grotesque Chinese high-stepping walk,
came to him.
"He'll be all right with me," he said to the maid.
He took Petsy into his room next door, and laid him on the chair in
which his mother had sat. The dog moved round in a circle once or
twice, and then settled himself down to sleep. Michael went to bed
also, and lay awake about a couple of minutes, not thinking, but
only being, while the owls hooted outside.
He awoke into complete consciousness, knowing that something had
aroused him, even as three days ago when the telephone rang to
summon him to his mother's deathbed. Then he did not know what had
awakened him, but now he was sure that there had been a tapping on
his door. And after he had sat up in bed completely awake, he
heard Petsy give a little welcoming bark. Then came the noise of
his small, soft tail beating against the cushion in the chair.
Michael had no feeling of fright at all, only of longing for
something that physically could not be. And longing, only longing,
once more he said:
"Come in, mother."
He believed he heard the door whisper on the carpet, but he saw
nothing. Only, the room was full of his mother's presence. It
seemed to him that, in obedience to her, he lay down completely
satisfied. . . . He felt no curiosity to see or hear more. She
was there, and that was enough.
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He woke again a little after dawn. Petsy between the window and
the door had jumped on to his bed to get out of the draught of the
morning wind. For the door was opened.
That morning the coffin was carried down the long winding path
above the deep-water reach, where Michael and Francis at Christmas
had heard the sound of stealthy rowing, and on to the boat that
awaited it to ferry it across to the church. There was high tide,
and, as they passed over the estuary, the stillness of supreme noon
bore to them the tolling of the bell. The mourners from the house
followed, just three of them, Lord Ashbridge, Michael, and Aunt
Barbara, for the rest were to assemble at the church. But of all
that, one moment stood out for Michael above all others, when, as
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they entered the graveyard, someone whom he could not see said: "I
am the Resurrection and the Life," and he heard that his father, by
whom he walked, suddenly caught his breath in a sob.
All that day there persisted that sense of complete detachment from
all but her whose body they had laid to rest on the windy hill
overlooking the broad water. His father, Aunt Barbara, the cousins
and relations who thronged the church were no more than inanimate
shadows compared with her whose presence had come last night into
his room, and had not left him since. The affairs of the world,
drums and the torch of war, had passed for those hours from his
knowledge, as at the centre of a cyclone there was a windless calm.
To-morrow he knew he would pass out into the tumult again, and the
minutes slipped like pearls from a string, dropping into the dim
gulf where the tempest raged. . . .
He went back to town next morning, after a short interview with his
father, who was coming up later in the day, when he told him that
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he intended to go back to his regiment as soon as possible. But,
knowing that he meant to go by the slow midday train, his father
proposed to stop the express for him that went through a few
minutes before. Michael could hardly believe his ears. . . .
CHAPTER XV
It was but a day or two after the outbreak of the war that it was
believed that an expeditionary force was to be sent to France, to
help in arresting the Teutonic tide that was now breaking over
Belgium; but no public and authoritative news came till after the
first draft of the force had actually set foot on French soil.
From the regiment of the Guards which Michael had rejoined, Francis
was among the first batch of officers to go, and that evening
Michael took down the news to Sylvia. Already stories of German
barbarity were rife, of women violated, of defenceless civilians
being shot down for no object except to terrorise, and to bring
home to the Belgians the unwisdom of presuming to cross the will of
the sovereign people. To-night, in the evening papers, there had
been a fresh batch of these revolting stories, and when Michael
entered the studio where Sylvia and her mother were sitting, he saw
the girl let drop behind the sofa the paper she had been reading.
He guessed what she must have found there, for he had already seen
the paper himself, and her silence, her distraction, and the misery
of her face confirmed his conjecture.
"I've brought you a little news to-night," he said. "The first
draft from the regiment went off to-day."
Mrs. Falbe put down her book, marking the place.
"Well, that does look like business, then," she said, "though I
must say I should feel safer if they didn't send our soldiers away.
Where have they gone to?"
"Destination unknown," said Michael. "But it's France. My cousin
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has gone."
"Francis?" asked Sylvia. "Oh, how wicked to send boys like that."
Michael saw that her nerves were sharply on edge. She had given
him no greeting, and now as he sat down she moved a little away
from him. She seemed utterly unlike herself.
"Mother has been told that every Englishman is as brave as two
Germans," she said. "She likes that."
"Yes, dear," observed Mrs. Falbe placidly. "It makes one feel
safer. I saw it in the paper, though; I read it."
Sylvia turned on Michael.
"Have you seen the evening paper?" she asked.
Michael knew what was in her mind.
"I just looked at it," he said. "There didn't seem to be much
news."
"No, only reports, rumours, lies," said Sylvia.
Mrs. Falbe got up. It was her habit to leave the two alone
together, since she was sure they preferred that; incidentally,
also, she got on better with her book, for she found conversation
rather distracting. But to-night Sylvia stopped her.
"Oh, don't go yet, mother," she said. "It is very early."
It was clear that for some reason she did not want to be left alone
with Michael, for never had she done this before. Nor did it avail
anything now, for Mrs. Falbe, who was quite determined to pursue
her reading without delay, moved towards the door.
"But I am sure Michael wants to talk to you, dear," she said, "and
you have not seen him all day. I think I shall go up to bed."
Sylvia made no further effort to detain her, but when she had gone,
the silence in which they had so often sat together had taken on a
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perfectly different quality.
"And what have you been doing?" she said. "Tell me about your day.
No, don't. I know it has all been concerned with war, and I don't
want to hear about it."
"I dined with Aunt Barbara," said Michael. "She sent you her love.
She also wondered why you hadn't been to see her for so long."
Sylvia gave a short laugh, which had no touch of merriment in it.
"Did she really?" she asked. "I should have thought she could have
guessed. She set every nerve in my body jangling last time I saw
her by the way she talked about Germans. And then suddenly she
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pulled herself up and apologised, saying she had forgotten. That
made it worse! Michael, when you are unhappy, kindness is even
more intolerable than unkindness. I would sooner have Lady Barbara
abusing my people than saying how sorry she is for me. Don't let's
talk about it! Let's do something. Will you play, or shall I
sing? Let's employ ourselves."
Michael followed her lead.
"Ah, do sing," he said. "It's weeks since I have heard you sing."
She went quickly over to the bookcase of music by the piano.
"Come, then, let's sing and forget," she said. "Hermann always
said the artist was of no nationality. Let's begin quick. These
are all German songs: don't let's have those. Ah, and these, too!
What's to be done? All our songs seem to be German."
Michael laughed.
"But we've just settled that artists have no nationality, so I
suppose art hasn't either," he said.
Sylvia pulled herself together, conscious of a want of control, and
laid her hand on Michael's shoulder.
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"Oh, Michael, what should I do without you?" she said. "And yet--
well, let me sing."
She had placed a volume of Schubert on the music-stand, and opening
it at random he found "Du Bist die Ruhe." She sang the first
verse, but in the middle of the second she stopped.
"I can't," she said. "It's no use."
He turned round to her.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," he said. "But you know that."
She moved away from him, and walked down to the empty fireplace.
"I can't keep silence," she said, "though I know we settled not to
talk of those things when necessarily we cannot feel absolutely at
one. But, just before you came in, I was reading the evening
paper. Michael, how can the English be so wicked as to print, and
I suppose to believe, those awful things I find there? You told me
you had glanced at it. Well, did you glance at the lies they tell
about German atrocities?"
"Yes, I saw them," said Michael. "But it's no use talking about
them."
"But aren't you indignant?" she said. "Doesn't your blood boil to
read of such infamous falsehoods? You don't know Germans, but I
do, and it is impossible that such things can have happened."
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Michael felt profoundly uncomfortable. Some of these stories which
Sylvia called lies were vouched for, apparently, by respectable
testimony.
"Why talk about them?" he said. "I'm sure we were wise when we
settled not to."
She shook her head.
"Well, I can't live up to that wisdom," she said. "When I think of
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this war day and night and night and day, how can I prevent talking
to you about it? And those lies! Germans couldn't do such things.
It's a campaign of hate against us, set up by the English Press."
"I daresay the German Press is no better," said Michael.
"If that is so, I should be just as indignant about the German
Press," said she. "But it is only your guess that it is so."
Suddenly she stopped, and came a couple of steps nearer him.
"Michael, it isn't possible that you believe those things of us?"
she said.
He got up.
"Ah, do leave it alone, Sylvia," he said. "I know no more of the
truth or falsity of it than you. I have seen just what you have
seen in the papers."
"You don't feel the impossibility of it, then?" she asked.
"No, I don't. There seems to have been sworn testimony. War is a
cruel thing; I hate it as much as you. When men are maddened with
war, you can't tell what they would do. They are not the Germans
you know, nor the Germans I know, who did such things--not the
people I saw when I was with Hermann in Baireuth and Munich a year
ago. They are no more the same than a drunken man is the same as
that man when he is sober. They are two different people; drink
has made them different. And war has done the same for Germany."
He held out his hand to her. She moved a step back from him.
"Then you think, I suppose, that Hermann may be concerned in those
atrocities," she said.
Michael looked at her in amazement.
"You are talking sheer nonsense, Sylvia," he said.
"Not at all. It is a logical inference, just an application of the
principle you have stated."
Michael's instinct was just to take her in his arms and make the
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final appeal, saying, "We love each other, that's all," but his
reason prevented him. Sylvia had said a monstrous thing in cold
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blood, when she suggested that he thought Hermann might be
concerned in these deeds, and in cold blood, not by appealing to
her emotions, must she withdraw that.
"I'm not going to argue about it," he said. "I want you to tell me
at once that I am right, that it was sheer nonsense, to put no
other name to it, when you suggested that I thought that of
Hermann."
"Oh, pray put another name to it," she said.
"Very well. It was a wanton falsehood," said Michael, "and you
know it."
Truly this hellish nightmare of war and hate which had arisen
brought with it a brood not less terrible. A day ago, an hour ago
he would have merely laughed at the possibility of such a situation
between Sylvia and himself. Yet here it was: they were in the
middle of it now.
She looked up at him flashing with indignation, and a retort as
stinging as his rose to her lips. And then quite suddenly, all her
anger went from her, as her, heart told her, in a voice that would
not be silenced, the complete justice of what he had said, and the
appeal that Michael refrained from making was made by her to
herself. Remorse held her on its spikes for her abominable
suggestion, and with it came a sense of utter desolation and
misery, of hatred for herself in having thus quietly and
deliberately said what she had said. She could not account for it,
nor excuse herself on the plea that she had spoken in passion, for
she had spoken, as he felt, in cold blood. Hence came the misery
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in the knowledge that she must have wounded Michael intolerably.
Her lips so quivered that when she first tried to speak no words
would come. That she was truly ashamed brought no relief, no ease
to her surrender, for she knew that it was her real self who had
spoken thus incredibly. But she could at least disown that part of
her.
"I beg your pardon, Michael," she said. "I was atrocious. Will
you forgive me? Because I am so miserable."
He had nothing but love for her, love and its kinsman pity.
"Oh, my dear, fancy you asking that!" he said.
Just for the moment of their reconciliation, it seemed to both that
they came closer to each other than they had ever been before, and
the chance of the need of any such another reconciliation was
impossible to the verge of laughableness, so that before five
minutes were past he could make the smile break through her tears
at the absurdity of the moment that now seemed quite unreal. Yet
that which was at the root of their temporary antagonism was not
removed by the reconciliation; at most they had succeeded in
cutting off the poisonous shoot that had suddenly sprouted from it.
The truth of this in the days that followed was horribly
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demonstrated.
It was not that they ever again came to the spoken bitterness of
words, for the sharpness of them, once experienced, was shunned by
each of them, but times without number they had to sheer off, and
not approach the ground where these poisoned tendrils trailed. And
in that sense of having to take care, to be watchful lest a chance
word should bring the peril close to them, the atmosphere of
complete ease and confidence, in which alone love can flourish, was
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tainted. Love was there, but its flowers could not expand, it
could not grow in the midst of this bitter air. And what made the
situation more and increasingly difficult was the fact that, next
to their love for each other, the emotion that most filled the mind
of each was this sense of race-antagonism. It was impossible that
the news of the war should not be mentioned, for that would have
created an intolerable unreality, and all that was in their power
was to avoid all discussion, to suppress from speech all the
feelings with which the news filled them. Every day, too, there
came fresh stories of German abominations committed on the
Belgians, and each knew that the other had seen them, and yet
neither could mention them. For while Sylvia could not believe
them, Michael could not help doing so, and thus there was no common
ground on which they could speak of them. Often Mrs. Falbe, in
whose blood, it would seem, no sense of race beat at all, would add
to the embarrassment by childlike comments, saying at one time in
reference to such things that she made a point of not believing all
she saw in the newspapers, or at another ejaculating, "Well, the
Germans do seem to have behaved very cruelly again!" But no
emotion appeared to colour these speeches, while all the emotion of
the world surged and bubbled behind the silence of the other two.
Then followed the darkest days that England perhaps had ever known,
when the German armies, having overcome the resistance of Belgium,
suddenly swept forward again across France, pushing before them
like the jetsam and flotsam on the rim of the advancing tide the
allied armies. Often in these appalling weeks, Michael would
hesitate as to whether he should go to see Sylvia or not, so
unbearable seemed the fact that she did not and could not feel or
understand what England was going through. So far from blaming her
for it, he knew that it could not be otherwise, for her blood
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called to her, even as his to him, while somewhere in the onrush of
those advancing and devouring waves was her brother, with whom, so
it had often seemed to him, she was one soul. Thus, while in that
his whole sympathy and whole comprehension of her love was with
him, there was as well all that deep, silent English patriotism of
which till now he had scarcely been conscious, praying with mute
entreaty that disaster and destruction and defeat might overwhelm
those advancing hordes. Once, when the anxiety and peril were at
their height, he made up his mind not to see her that day, and
spent the evening by himself. But later, when he was actually on
his way to bed, he knew he could not keep away from her, and though
it was already midnight, he drove down to Chelsea, and found her
sitting up, waiting for the chance of his coming.
For a moment, as she greeted him and he kissed her silently, they
escaped from the encompassing horror.
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"Ah, you have come," she said. "I thought perhaps you might. I
have wanted you dreadfully."
The roar of artillery, the internecine strife were still. Just for
a few seconds there was nothing in the world for him but her, nor
for her anything but him.
"I couldn't go to bed without just seeing you," he said. "I won't
keep you up."
They stood with hands clasped.
"But if you hadn't come, Michael," she said, "I should have
understood."
And then the roar and the horror began again. Her words were the
simplest, the most directly spoken to him, yet could not but evoke
the spectres that for the moment had vanished. She had meant to
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let her love for him speak; it had spoken, and instantly through
the momentary sunlight of it, there loomed the fierce and enormous
shadow. It could not be banished from their most secret hearts;
even when the doors were shut and they were alone together thus, it
made its entrance, ghost-like, terrible, and all love's bolts and
bars could not keep it out. Here was the tragedy of it, that they
could not stand embraced with clasped hands and look at it together
and so rob it of its terrors, for, at the sight of it, their hands
were loosened from each other's, and in its presence they were
forced to stand apart. In his heart, as surely as he knew her
love, Michael knew that this great shadow under which England lay
was shot with sunlight for Sylvia, that the anxiety, the awful
suspense that made his fingers cold as he opened the daily papers,
brought into it to her an echo of victorious music that beat to the
tramp of advancing feet that marched ever forward leaving the
glittering Rhine leagues upon leagues in their rear. The Bavarian
corps in which Hermann served was known to be somewhere on the
Western front, for the Emperor had addressed them ten days before
on their departure from Munich, and Sylvia and Michael were both
aware of that. But they who loved Hermann best could not speak of
it to each other, and the knowledge of it had to be hidden in
silence, as if it had been some guilty secret in which they were
the terrified accomplices, instead of its being a bond of love
which bound them both to Hermann.
In addition to the national anxiety, there was the suspense of
those whose sons and husbands and fathers were in the fighting
line. Columns of casualty lists were published, and each name
appearing there was a sword that pierced a home. One such list,
published early in September, was seen by Michael as he drove down
on Sunday morning to spend the rest of the day with Sylvia, and the
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first name that he read there was that of Francis. For a moment,
as he remembered afterwards, the print had danced before his eyes,
as if seen through the quiver of hot air. Then it settled down and
he saw it clearly.
He turned and drove back to his rooms in Half Moon Street, feeling
MICHAEL
195
that strange craving for loneliness that shuns any companionship.
He must, for a little, sit alone with the fact, face it, adjust
himself to it. Till that moment when the dancing print grew still
again he had not, in all the anxiety and suspense of those days,
thought of Francis's death as a possibility even. He had heard
from him only two mornings before, in a letter thoroughly
characteristic that saw, as Francis always saw, the pleasant and
agreeable side of things. Washing, he had announced, was a
delusion; after a week without it you began to wonder why you had
ever made a habit of it. . . . They had had a lot of marching,
always in the wrong direction, but everyone knew that would soon be
over. . . . Wasn't London very beastly in August? . . . Would
Michael see if he could get some proper cigarettes out to him?
Here there was nothing but little black French affairs (and not
many of them) which tied a knot in the throat of the smoker. . . .
And now Francis, with all his gaiety and his affection, and his
light pleasant dealings with life, lay dead somewhere on the sunny
plains of France, killed in action by shell or bullet in the midst
of his youth and strength and joy in life, to gratify the damned
dreams of the man who had been the honoured guest at Ashbridge, and
those who had advised and flattered and at the end perhaps just
used him as their dupe. To their insensate greed and swollen-
headed lust for world-power was this hecatomb of sweet and pleasant
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lives offered, and in their onward course through the vines and
corn of France they waded through the blood of the slain whose only
crime was that they had dared to oppose the will of Germany, as
voiced by the War Lord. And as milestones along the way they had
come were set the records of their infamy, in rapine and ruthless
slaughter of the innocent. Just at first, as he sat alone in his
room, Michael but contemplated images that seemed to form in his
mind without his volition, and, emotion-numb from the shock, they
seemed external to him. Sometimes he had a vision of Francis lying
without mark or wound or violence on him in some vineyard on the
hill-side, with face as quiet as in sleep turned towards a moonlit
sky. Then came another picture, and Francis was walking across the
terrace at Ashbridge with his gun over his shoulder, towards Lord
Ashbridge and the Emperor, who stood together, just as Michael had
seen the three of them when they came in from the shooting-party.
As Francis came near, the Emperor put a cartridge into his gun and
shot him. . . . Yes, that was it: that was what had happened. The
marvellous peacemaker of Europe, the fire-engine who, as Hermann
had said, was ready to put out all conflagrations, the fatuous
mountebank who pretended to be a friend to England, who conducted
his own balderdash which he called music, had changed his role and
shown his black heart and was out to kill.
Wild panoramas like these streamed through Michael's head, as if
projected there by some magic lantern, and while they lasted he was
conscious of no grief at all, but only of a devouring hate for the
mad, lawless butchers who had caused Francis's death, and willingly
at that moment if he could have gone out into the night and killed
a German, and met his death himself in the doing of it, he would
have gone to his doom as to a bridal-bed. But by degrees, as the
stress of these unsought imaginings abated, his thoughts turned to
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Francis himself again, who, through all his boyhood and early
manhood, had been to him a sort of ideal and inspiration. How he
MICHAEL
196
had loved and admired him, yet never with a touch of jealousy! And
Francis, whose letter lay open by him on the table, lay dead on the
battlefields of France. There was the envelope, with the red
square mark of the censor upon it, and the sheet with its gay
scrawl in pencil, asking for proper cigarettes. And, with a pang
of remorse, all the more vivid because it concerned so trivial a
thing, Michael recollected that he had not sent them. He had meant
to do so yesterday afternoon but something had put it out of his
head. Never again would Francis ask him to send out cigarettes.
Michael laid his head on his arms, so that his face was close to
that pencilled note, and the relief of tears came to him.
Soon he raised himself again, not ashamed of his sorrow, but
somehow ashamed of the black hate that before had filled him. That
was gone for the present, anyhow, and Michael was glad to find it
vanished. Instead there was an aching pity, not for Francis alone
nor for himself, but for all those concerned in this hideous
business. A hundred and a thousand homes, thrown suddenly to-day
into mourning, were there: no doubt there were houses in that
Bavarian village in the pine woods above which he and Hermann had
spent the day when there was no opera at Baireuth where a son or a
brother or a father were mourned, and in the kinship of sorrow he
found himself at peace with all who had suffered loss, with all who
were living through days of deadly suspense. There was nothing
effeminate or sentimental about it; he had never been manlier than
in this moment when he claimed his right to be one with them. It
was right to pause like this, with his hand clasped in the hands of
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friends and foes alike. But without disowning that, he knew that
Francis's death, which had brought that home to him, had made him
eager also for his own turn to come, when he would go out to help
in the grim work that lay in front of him. He was perfectly ready
to die if necessary, and if not, to kill as many Germans as
possible. And somehow the two aspects of it all, the pity and the
desire to kill, existed side by side, neither overlapping nor
contradicting one another.
His servant came into the room with a pencilled note, which he
opened. It was from Sylvia.
"Oh, Michael, I have just called and am waiting to know if you will
see me. I have seen the news, and I want to tell you how sorry I
am. But if you don't care to see me I know you will say so, won't
you?"
Though an hour before he had turned back on his way to go to
Sylvia, he did not hesitate now.
"Yes, ask Miss Falbe to come up," he said.
She came up immediately, and once again as they met, the world and
the war stood apart from them.
"I did not expect you to come, Michael," she said, "when I saw the
news. I did not mean to come here myself. But--but I had to. I
had just to find out whether you wouldn't see me, and let me tell
MICHAEL
197
you how sorry I am."
He smiled at her as they stood facing each other.
"Thank you for coming," he said; "I'm so glad you came. But I had
to be alone just a little."
"I didn't do wrong?" she asked.
"Indeed you didn't. I did wrong not to come to you. I loved
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Francis, you see."
Already the shadow threatened again. It was just the fact that he
loved Francis that had made it impossible for him to go to her, and
he could not explain that. And as the shadow began to fall she
gave a little shudder.
"Oh, Michael, I know you did," she said. "It's just that which
concerns us, that and my sympathy for you. He was such a dear. I
only saw him, I know, once or twice, but from that I can guess what
he was to you. He was a brother to you--a--a--Hermann."
Michael felt, with Sylvia's hand in his, they were both running
desperately away from the shadow that pursued them. Desperately he
tried with her to evade it. But every word spoken between them
seemed but to bring it nearer to them.
"I only came to say that," she said. "I had to tell you myself, to
see you as I told you, so that you could know how sincere, how
heartfelt--"
She stopped suddenly.
"That's all, my dearest," she added. "I will go away again now."
Across that shadow that had again fallen between them they looked
and yearned for each other.
"No, don't go--don't go," he said. "I want you more than ever. We
are here, here and now, you and I, and what else matters in
comparison of that? I loved Francis, as you know, and I love
Hermann, but there is our love, the greatest thing of all. We've
got it--it's here. Oh, Sylvia, we must be wise and simple, we must
separate things, sort them out, not let them get mixed with one
another. We can do it; I know we can. There's nothing outside us;
nothing matters--nothing matters."
There was just that ray of sun peering over the black cloud that
illumined their faces to each other, while already the sharp peaked
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shadow of it had come between them. For that second, while he
spoke, it seemed possible that, in the middle of welter and chaos
and death and enmity, these two souls could stand apart, in the
passionate serene of love, and the moment lasted for just as long
as she flung herself into his arms. And then, even while her face
was pressed to his, and while the riotous blood of their pressed
lips sang to them, the shadow fell across them. Even as he
MICHAEL
198
asserted the inviolability of the sanctuary in which they stood, he
knew it to be an impossible Utopia--that he should find with her
the peace that should secure them from the raging storm, the cold
shadow--and the loosening of her arms about his neck but endorsed
the message of his own heart. For such heavenly security cannot
come except to those who have been through the ultimate bitterness
that the world can bring; it is not arrived at but through complete
surrender to the trial of fire, and as yet, in spite of their
opposed patriotism, in spite of her sincerest sympathy with
Michael's loss, the assault on the most intimate lines of the
fortress had not yet been delivered. Before they could reach the
peace that passed understanding, a fiercer attack had to be
repulsed, they had to stand and look at each other unembittered
across waves and billows of a salter Marah than this.
But still they clung, while in their eyes there passed backwards
and forwards the message that said, "It is not yet; it is not
thus!" They had been like two children springing together at the
report of some thunder-clap, not knowing in the presence of what
elemental outpouring of force they hid their faces together. As
yet it but boomed on the horizon, though messages of its havoc
reached them, and the test would come when it roared and lightened
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overhead. Already the tension of the approaching tempest had so
wrought on them that for a month past they had been unreal to each
other, wanting ease, wanting confidence; and now, when the first
real shock had come, though for a moment it threw them into each
other's arms, this was not, as they knew, the real, the final
reconciliation, the touchstone that proved the gold. Francis's
death, the cousin whom Michael loved, at the hands of one of the
nation to whom Sylvia belonged, had momentarily made them feel that
all else but their love was but external circumstance; and, even in
the moment of their feeling this, the shadow fell again, and left
them chilly and shivering.
For a moment they still held each other round the neck and
shoulder, then the hold slipped to the elbow, and soon their hands
parted. As yet no word had been said since Michael asserted that
nothing else mattered, and in the silence of their gradual
estrangement the sanguine falsity of that grew and grew and grew.
"I know what you feel," she said at length, "and I feel it also."
Her voice broke, and her hands felt for his again.
"Michael, where are you?" she cried. "No, don't touch me; I didn't
mean that. Let's face it. For all we know, Hermann might have
killed Francis. . . . Whether he did or not, doesn't matter. it
might have been. It's like that."
A minute before Michael, in soul and blood and mind and bones, had
said that nothing but Sylvia and himself had any real existence.
He had clung to her, even as she to him, hoping that this
individual love would prove itself capable of overriding all else
that existed. But it had not needed that she should speak to show
him how pathetically he had erred. Before she had made a concrete
instance he knew how hopeless his wish had been: the silence, the
MICHAEL
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199
loosening of hands had told him that. And when she spoke there was
a brutality in what she said, and worse than the brutality there
was a plain, unvarnished truth.
There was no question now of her going away at once, as she had
proposed, any more than a boat in the rapids, roared round by
breakers, can propose to start again. They were in the middle of
it, and so short a way ahead was the cataract that ran with blood.
On each side at present were fine, green landing-places; he at the
oar, she at the tiller, could, if they were of one mind, still put
ashore, could run their boat in, declining the passage of the
cataract with all its risks, its river of blood. There was but a
stroke of the oar to be made, a pull on a rope of the rudder, and a
step ashore. Here was a way out of the storm and the rapids.
A moment before, when, by their physical parting they had realised
the strength of the bonds that held them apart this solution had
not occurred to Sylvia. Now, critically and forlornly hopeful, it
flashed on her. She felt, she almost felt--for the ultimate
decision rested with him--that with him she would throw everything
else aside, and escape, just escape, if so he willed it, into some
haven of neutrality, where he and she would be together, leaving
the rest of the world, her country and his, to fight over these
irreconcilable quarrels. It did not seem to matter what happened
to anybody else, provided only she and Michael were together, out
of risk, out of harm. Other lives might be precious, other ideals
and patriotisms might be at stake, but she wanted to be with him
and nothing else at all. No tie counted compared to that; there
was but one life given to man and woman, and now that her
individual happiness, the individual joy of her love, was at stake,
she felt, even as Michael had said, that nothing else mattered,
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that they would be right to realise themselves at any cost.
She took his hands again.
"Listen to me, Michael," she said. "I can't bear any longer that
these horrors should keep rising up between us, and, while we are
here in the middle of it all, it can't be otherwise. I ask you,
then, to come away with me, to leave it all behind. It is not our
quarrel. Already Hermann has gone; I can't lose you too."
She looked up at him for a moment, and then quickly away again, for
she felt her case, which seemed to her just now so imperative,
slipping away from her in that glance she got of his eyes, that,
for all the love that burned there, were blank with astonishment.
She must convince him; but her own convictions were weak when she
looked at him.
"Don't answer me yet," she said. "Hear what I have to say. Don't
you see that while we are like this we are lost to each other? And
as you yourself said just now, nothing matters in comparison to our
love. I want you to take me away, out of it all, so that we can
find each other again. These horrors thwart and warp us; they
spoil the best thing that the world holds for us. My patriotism is
just as sound as yours, but I throw it away to get you. Do the
same, then. You can get out of your service somehow. . . ."
MICHAEL
200
And then her voice began to falter.
"If you loved me, you would do it," she said. "If--"
And then suddenly she found she could say no more at all. She had
hoped that when she stated these things she would convince him,
and, behold, all she had done was to shake her own convictions so
that they fell clattering round her like an unstable card-house.
Desperately she looked again at him, wondering if she had convinced
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him at all, and then again she looked, wondering if she should see
contempt in his eyes. After that she stood still and silent, and
her face flamed.
"Do you despise me, Michael?" she said.
He gave a little sigh of utter content.
"Oh, my dear, how I love you for suggesting such a sweet
impossibility," he said. "But how you would despise me if I
consented."
She did not answer.
"Wouldn't you?" he repeated.
She gave a sorrowful semblance of a laugh.
"I suppose I should," she said.
"And I know you would. You would contrast me in your mind, whether
you wished to or not, with Hermann, with poor Francis, sorely to my
disadvantage."
They sat silent a little, but there was another question Sylvia had
to ask for which she had to collect her courage. At last it came.
"Have they told you yet when you are going?" she said.
"Not for certain. But--it will be before many days are passed.
And the question arises--will you marry me before I go?"
She hid her face on his shoulder.
"I will do what you wish," she said.
"But I want to know your wish."
She clung closer to him.
"Michael, I don't think I could bear to part with you if we were
married," she said. "It would be worse, I think, than it's going
to be. But I intend to do exactly what you wish. You must tell
me. I'm going to obey you before I am your wife as well as after."
Michael had long debated this in his mind. It seemed to him that
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201
if he came back, as might easily happen, hopelessly crippled,
incurably invalid, it would be placing Sylvia in an unfairly
difficult position, if she was already his wife. He might be
hideously disfigured; she would be bound to but a wreck of a man;
he might be utterly unfit to be her husband, and yet she would be
tied to him. He had already talked the question over with his
father, who, with that curious posthumous anxiety to have a further
direct heir, had urged that the marriage should take place at once;
but with his own feeling on the subject, as well as Sylvia's, he at
once made up his mind.
"I agree with you," he said. "We will settle it so, then."
She smiled at him.
"How dreadfully business-like," she said, with an attempt at
lightness.
"I know. It's rather a good thing one has got to be business-like,
when--"
That failed also, and he drew her to him and kissed her.
CHAPTER XVI
Michael was sitting in the kitchen of a French farm-house just
outside the village of Laires, some three miles behind the English
front. The kitchen door was open, and on the flagged floor was
cast an oblong of primrose-coloured November sunshine, warm and
pleasant, so that the bluebottle flies buzzed hopefully about it,
settling occasionally on the cracked green door, where they cleaned
their wings, and generally furbished themselves up, as if the
warmth was that of a spring day that promised summer to follow.
They were there in considerable numbers, for just outside in the
cobbled yard was a heap of manure, where they hungrily congregated.
Against the white-washed wall of the house there lay a fat sow,
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basking contentedly, and snorting in her dreams. The yard, bounded
on two sides by the house walls, was shut in on the third by a row
of farm-sheds, and the fourth was open. Just outside it stood a
small copse half flooded with the brimming water of a sluggish
stream that meandered by the side of the farm-road leading out of
the yard, which turned to the left, and soon joined the highway.
This farm-road was partly under water, though not deeply, so that
by skirting along its raised banks it was possible to go dry-shod
to the highway underneath which the stream passed in a brick
culvert.
Through the kitchen window, set opposite the door, could be seen a
broad stretch of country of the fenland type, flat and bare, and
intersected with dykes, where sedges stirred slightly in the
southerly breeze. Here and there were pools of overflowed
rivulets, and here and there were plantations of stunted hornbeam,
the russet leaves of which still clung thickly to them. But in the
main it was a bare and empty land, featureless and stolid.
MICHAEL
202
Just below the kitchen window there was a plot of cultivated
ground, thriftily and economically used for the growing of
vegetables. Concession, however, was made to the sense of
brightness and beauty, for on each side of the path leading up to
the door ran a row of Michaelmas daisies, rather battered by the
fortnight of rain which had preceded this day of still warm sun,
but struggling bravely to shake off the effect of the adverse
conditions under which they had laboured.
The kitchen itself was extremely clean and orderly. Its flagged
floor was still damp and brown in patches from the washing it had
received two hours before; but the draught between open window and
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open door was fast drying it. Down the centre of the room was a
deal table without a cloth, on which were laid some half-dozen
places, each marked with a knife and fork and spoon and a thick
glass, ready for the serving of the midday meal. On the white-
washed walls hung two photographs of family groups, in one of which
appeared the father and mother and three little children, in the
other the same personages some ten years later, and a lithograph of
the Blessed Virgin. On each side of the table was a deal bench, at
the head and foot two wooden armchairs. A dresser stood against
the wall, on the floor by the oven was a frayed rug, and most
important of all, to Michael's mind, was a big stewpot that stood
on the top of the oven. From time to time a fat, comfortable
Frenchwoman bustled in, and took off the lid of this to stir it, or
placed on the dresser a plate of cheese, or a loaf of freshly
cooked brown bread. Two or three of Michael's brother-officers
were there, one sitting in the patch of sunlight with his back
against the green door, another on the step outside. The post had
come in not long before, and all of them, Michael included, were
occupied with letters and papers.
To-day there happened to be no letters for Michael, and the paper
which he glanced at seemed a very feeble effort in the way of
entertainment. There was no news in it, except news about the war,
which here, out at the front, did not interest him in the least.
Perhaps in England people liked to know that a hundred yards of
trenches had been taken at one place, and that three German attacks
had failed at another; but when you were actually engaged (or had
been or would soon again be) in taking part in those things, it
seemed a waste of paper and compositor's time to record them.
There was a column of letters also from indignant Britons, using
violent language about the crimes and treachery of Germany. That
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also was uninteresting and far-fetched. Nothing that Germany had
done mattered the least. There was no use in arguing and slinging
wild expressions about; it was a stale subject altogether when you
were within earshot of that incessant booming of guns. All the
morning that had gone on without break, and no doubt they would get
news of what had happened before they set out again that evening
for another spell in the trenches. But in all probability nothing
particular had happened. Probably the London papers would record
it next day, a further tediousness on their part. It would be much
more interesting to hear what was going on there, whether there
were any new plays, whether there had been any fresh concerts, what
the weather was like, or even who had been lunching at Prince's, or
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dining at the Carlton.
He put down his uninteresting paper, and strolled out into the
farmyard, stepping over the legs of the junior officer who blocked
the doorway, and did not attempt to move. On the doorstep was
sitting a major of his regiment, who, more politely, shifted his
place a little so that Michael should pass. Outside the smell of
manure was acrid but not unpleasant, the old sow grunted in her
sleep, and one of the green shutters outside the upper windows
slowly blew to. There was someone inside the room apparently, for
the moment after a hand and arm bare to the elbow were protruded,
and fastened the latch of the shutter, so that it should not move
again.
A little further on was a rail that separated the copse from the
roadway, and here out of the wind Michael sat down, and lit a
cigarette to stop his yearning for the bubbling stewpot, which
would not be broached for half an hour yet. The day, he believed,
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was Wednesday, but the whole quiet of the place, apart from that
drowsy booming on the eastern horizon, made it feel like Sunday.
Nobody but the fat Frenchwoman who bustled about had anything to
do; there was a Sabbath leisure about everything, about the dozing
sow, the buzzing flies, the lounging figures that read letters and
papers. When last they were here, it is true, there were rather
more of them. Eight officers had been billeted here last week,
before they had been in the trenches and now there were but six.
This evening they would set out again for another forty-eight hours
in that hellish inferno, but to-morrow a fresh draft was arriving,
so that when next they foregathered here, whatever had happened in
the interval, there would probably be at least six of them.
It did not seem to matter much what six there would be, or whether
there would be more than six or less. All that mattered at this
moment, as he inhaled the first incense of his cigarette, was that
the rain was over for the present, that the sun shone from a blue
sky, that he felt extraordinarily well and tranquil, and that
dinner would soon be ready. But of all these agreeable things what
pleased him most was the tranquillity; to be alive here with the
manure heap steaming in the sun, and the sow asleep by the house
wall, and swallows settling on the eaves, was "Paradise enow."
Somewhere deep down in him were streams of yearning and of horror,
flowing like an underground river in the dark. He yearned for
Sylvia, he thought with horror of the two days in the trenches that
had preceded this rest in the white-washed farm-house, and with
horror he thought of the days and nights that would succeed it.
But both horror and yearnings were stupefied by the content that
flooded the present moment. No doubt it was reaction from what had
gone before, but the reaction was complete. Just now he asked for
nothing but to sit in the sun and smoke his cigarette, and wait for
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dinner. As far as he knew he did not think of anything particular;
he just existed in the sun.
The wind must have shifted a little, for before long it came round
the corner of the house, and slightly spoiled the mellow warmth of
the sunshine. This would never do. The Epicurean in him revolted
at the idea of losing a moment of this complete well-being, and
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arguing that if the wind blew here, it must be dead calm below the
kitchen window on the other side of the house, he got off his rail
and walked along the slippery bank at the edge of the flooded road
in order to go there. It was hard to keep his footing here, and
his progress was slow, but he felt he would take any amount of
trouble to avoid getting his feet wet in the flooded road. Then
there was a patch of kitchen-garden to cross, where the mud clung
rather annoyingly to his instep, and, having gained the garden
path, he very carefully wiped his boots and with a fallen twig dug
away the clots of soil that stuck to the instep.
He found that he had been quite right in supposing that the air
would be windless here, and full of great content he sat down with
his back to the house wall. A tortoise-shell butterfly, encouraged
by the warmth, was flitting about among the Michaelmas daisies that
bordered the path and settling on them, opening its wings to the
genial sun. Two or three bees buzzed there also; the summer-like
tranquillity inserted into the middle of November squalls and rain,
deluded them as well as Michael into living completely in the
present hour. Gnats hovered about. One settled on Michael's hand,
where he instantly killed it, and was sorry he had done so. For
the time the booming of guns which had sounded incessantly all the
morning to the east, stopped altogether, and absolute quiet
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reigned. Had he not been so hungry, and so unable to get the idea
of the stewpot out of his head, Michael would have been content to
sit with his back to the sun-warmed wall for ever.
The high-road, raised and embanked above the low-lying fields, ran
eastwards in an undeviating straight line. Just opposite the farm
were the last outlying huts of the village, and from there onwards
it lay untenanted. But before many minutes were passed, the quiet
of the autumn noon began to be overscored by distant humming, faint
at first, and then quickly growing louder, and he saw far away a
little brown speck coming swiftly towards him. It turned out to be
a dispatch-rider, mounted on a motor-bicycle, who with a hoot of
his horn roared westward through the village. Immediately
afterwards another humming, steadier and more sonorous, grew
louder, and Michael, recognising it, looked up instinctively into
the blue sky overhead, as an English aeroplane, flying low, came
from somewhere behind, and passed directly over him, going
eastwards. Before long it stopped its direct course, and began to
mount in spirals, and when at a sufficient height, it resumed its
onward journey towards the German lines. Then three or four
privates, billeted in the village, and now resting after duty in
the trenches, strolled along the road, laughing and talking. They
sat down not a hundred yards from Michael and one began to whistle
"Tipperary." Another and another took it up until all four were
engaged on it. It was not precisely in tune nor were the
performers in unison, but it produced a vaguely pleasant effect,
and if not in tune with the notes as the composer wrote them, the
sight and sound of those four whistling and idle soldiers was in
tune with the air of security of Sunday morning.
Something far down the road caught Michael's eye, some moving line
of brown wagons. As they came nearer he saw that they were the
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motor-ambulances of the Red Cross, moving slowly along the ruts and
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holes which the traffic had worn, so that the occupants should
suffer as little jolting as was possible. They carried no doubt
the wounded who had been taken from the trenches last night, and
now, after calling for them at the first dressing station in the
rear of the lines, were removing them to hospital. As they passed
the four men sitting by the roadside, one of them shouted, "Cheer,
oh, mates!" and then they fell to whistling "Tipperary" again.
Then, oh, blessed moment! the fat Frenchwoman looked out of the
kitchen window just above his head.
"Diner, m'sieu," she said, and Michael, without another thought of
ambulance or aeroplane, scrambled to his feet. Somewhere in the
middle distance of his mind he was sorry that this tranquil morning
was over, just as below in the darkness of it there ran those
streams of yearning and of horror, but all his ordinary work-a-day
self was occupied with the immediate prospect of the stewpot. It
was some sort of a ragout, he knew, and he lusted for it. Red wine
of the country would be there, and cheese and new brown bread. . . .
It surprised him to find how completely his bodily needs and the
pleasure of their gratification had possession of him.
They were under orders to go back to the trenches shortly after
sunset, and when their meal was over there remained but an hour or
two before they had to start. The warmth and glory of the day was
already gone, and streamers of cloud were beginning to form over
the open sky. All afternoon these thickened till a dull layer of
grey had thickly overspread the heavens and below that arch of
vapour that cut off the sun the wind was blowing chilly. With that
change in the weather, Michael's mood changed also, and the horror
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of the return to the trenches began to come to the surface. He was
not as yet aware of any physical fear of death or of wound, rather,
the feeling was one of some mental and spiritual shrinking from the
whole of this vast business of murder, where hundreds and thousands
of men along the battle front that stretched half-way across
Europe, were employed, day and night, without having any quarrel
with each other, in the unsleeping vigilant work of killing. Most
of them in all probability, were quite decent fellows, like those
four who had whistled "Tipperary" together, and yet they were
spending months of young, sweet life up to the knees in water, in
foul and ill-smelling trenches in order to kill others whom they
had never seen except as specks on the sights of their rifles.
Somewhere behind that gruesome business, as he knew, there stood
the Cause, calm and serene, like some great statue, which made this
insensate murdering necessary; but just for an hour to-day, as he
waited till they had to be on the move again, he found himself
unable to make real to his own mind the existence of that cause,
and could not see beyond the bloody and hideous things that
resulted from it.
Then, in this inaction of waiting, an attack of mere physical
cowardice seized him, and he found himself imagining the mutilation
and torture that perhaps awaited him personally in those deathly
ditches. He tried to busy himself with the preparation of the few
things that he would take with him, he tried to encourage himself
by remembering that in his previous experiences there he had not
been conscious of any fear, by telling himself that these were only
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the unreal anticipations that were always ready to pounce on one
even before such mildly alarming affairs as a visit to the dentist;
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but in spite of his efforts, he found his hands growing clammy and
cold at the thoughts which beset his brain. What if there happened
to him what had happened to another junior officer who was close to
him at the moment, when a fragment of shell turned him from a big
gay boy into a writhing bundle at the bottom of the trench! He had
lived for a couple of hours like that, moaning and crying out, "For
God's sake kill me!" What if, more mercifully, he was killed
outright, so that he would lie there in peace till next night they
removed his body, or perhaps had to bury him in the trench itself,
with a dozen handfuls of soil cast over him! At that he suddenly
realised how passionately he wanted to live, to escape from this
infernal butchery, to be safe again, gloriously or ingloriously, it
mattered not which, to be with Sylvia once more. He told himself
that he had been an utter fool ever to re-enter the army again like
this. He could certainly have got some appointment as dispatch-
carrier or had himself attached to the headquarters staff, or even
have shuffled out of it altogether. . . . But, above all, he
wanted Sylvia; he wanted to be allowed to lead the ordinary human
life, safely and securely, with the girl he loved, and with the
musical pursuits that were his passion. He had hated soldiering in
times of peace; he found now that he was terrified of it in times
of war. He felt physically sick, as with cold hands and trembling
knees he stood and waited, lighting cigarettes and throwing them
away, in front of the kitchen fire, where the stewpot was already
bubbling again for those lucky devils who would return here to-
night.
The Major of his company was sitting in the window watching him,
though Michael was unaware of it. Suddenly he got up, and came
across to the fire, and put his hand on his shoulder.
"Don't mind it, Comber," he said quietly. "We all get a touch of
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it sometimes. But you'll find it will pass all right. It's the
waiting doing nothing that does it."
That touched Michael absolutely in the right place.
"Thanks awfully, sir," he said.
"Not a bit. But it's damned beastly while it lasts. You'll be all
right when we move. Don't forget to take your fur coat up if
you've got one. We shall have a cold night."
Just after sunset they set out, marching in the gathering dusk down
the road eastwards, where in a mile or two they would strike the
huge rabbit warren of trenches that joined the French line to the
north and south. Once or twice they had to open out and go by the
margin of the road to let ambulances or commissariat wagon go by,
but there was but little traffic here, as the main lines of
communication lay on other roads. High above them, scarcely
visible in the dusk, an English aeroplane droned back from its
reconnaissance, and once there was the order given to scatter over
the fields as a German Taube passed across them. This caused much
laughter and chaff among the men, and Michael heard one say, "Dove
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they call it, do they? I'd like to make a pigeon-pie of them
doves." Soon they scrambled back on to the road again, and the
interminable "Tipperary" was resumed, in whistle and song. Michael
remembered how Aunt Barbara had heard it at a music-hall, and had
spoken of it as a new and catchy tune which you could carry away
with you. Nowadays, it carried you away. It had become the
audible soul of the British army.
The trench which Michael's company were to occupy for the next
forty-eight hours was in the first firing-line, and to reach it
they had to pass in single file up a mile of communication
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trenches, from which on all sides, like a vast rabbit warren, there
opened out other galleries and passages that led to different parts
of this net-work of the lines. It ran not in a straight line but
in short sections with angles intervening, so under no
circumstances could any considerable length of it be enfiladed, and
was lit here and there by little oil lamps placed in embrasures in
one or other wall of it, or for some distance at a time it was dark
except for the vague twilight of the cloudy sky overhead. Then
again, as they approached the firing-line, it would suddenly become
intensely bright, when from the English lines, or from those of the
Germans which lay not more than two hundred yards in front of them,
a fireball or star-shell was sent up, that caused everything it
shone upon to leap into vivid illumination. Usually, when this
happened, there came from one side or the other a volley of rifle
shots, that sounded like the crack of stock-whips, and once or
twice a bullet passed over their heads with the buzz as of some
vicious stinging insect. Here and there, where the bottom lay in
soft and clayey soil, they walked through mud that came half-way up
to the knee, and each foot had to be lifted with an effort, and was
set free with a smacking suck. Elsewhere, if the ground was
gravelly, the rain which for two days previously had been
incessant, had drained off, and the going was easy. But whether
the path lay over dry or soft places the air was sick with some
stale odour which the breeze that swept across the lines from the
south-east could not carry away. There was a perpetual pervading
reek that flowed along from the entrance of trenches to right and
left, that reminded Michael of the smell of a football scrimmage on
a wet day, laden with the odours of sweat and dripping clothes, and
something deadlier and more acrid. Sometimes they passed under a
section covered in with boards, over which the earth and clods of
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turf had been replaced, so that reconnoitring aeroplanes should not
so easily spy it out, and here from dark excavations the smell hung
overpoweringly. Now and then the ground over which they passed
yielded uneasily to the foot, where lay, only lightly covered over,
some corpse which it had been impossible to remove, and from time
to time they passed a huddled bundle of khaki not yet taken away.
But except for the artillery duel that day they had heard going on
that morning, the last day or two had been quiet, and the wounded
had all been got out, and for the most part the dead also.
After a long tramp in this communication trench they made a sharp
turn to the right, and entered that which they were going to hold
for the next forty-eight hours. Here they relieved the regiment
that had occupied it till now, who filed out as they came in.
Along it at intervals were excavations dug out in the side, some
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propped up with boards and posts, others, where the ground was of
sufficiently holding character, just scooped out. In front,
towards the German lines ran a parapet of excavated earth, with
occasional peep-holes bored in it, so that the sentry going his
rounds could look out and see if there was any sign of movement
from opposite without showing his head above the entrenchment. But
even this was a matter of some risk, since the enemy had located
these peep-holes, and from time to time fired a shot from a fixed
rifle that came straight through them and buried its bullet in the
hinder wall of the trench. Other spy-holes were therefore being
made, but these were not yet finished, and for the present till
they were dug, it was necessary to use the old ones. The trench,
like all the others, was excavated in short, zigzag lengths, so
that no point, either to right or left, commanded more than a score
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of yards of it.
In front, from just outside the parapet to a depth of some twenty
yards, stretched the spider-web of wire entanglements, and a little
farther down on the right there had been a copse of horn-beam
saplings. An attempt had been made by the enemy during the morning
to capture and entrench this, thus advancing their lines, but the
movement had been seen, and the artillery fire, which had been so
incessant all the morning, denoted the searching of this and the
rendering of it untenable. How thorough that searching had been
was clear, for that which had been an acre of wood was now but a
heap of timber fit only for faggots. Scarcely a tree was left
standing, and Michael, looking out of one of the peep-holes by the
light of a star-shell saw that the wire entanglements were thick
with leaves that the wind and the firing had detached from the
broken branches. In turn, the wire entanglements had come in for
some shelling by the enemy, and a squad of men were out now under
cover of the darkness repairing these. There was a slight dip in
the ground here, and by crouching and lying they were out of sight
of the trenches opposite; but there were some snipers in that which
had been a wood, from whom there came occasional shots. Then, from
lower down to the right, there came a fusillade from the English
lines suddenly breaking out, and after a few minutes as suddenly
stopping again. But the sniping from the wood had ceased.
Michael did not come on duty till six in the morning, and for the
present he had nothing to do except eat his rations and sleep as
well as he could in his dug-out. He had plenty of room to stretch
his legs if he sat half upright, and having taken his Major's
advice in the matter of bringing his fur coat with him, he found
himself warm enough, in spite of the rather bitter wind that,
striking an angle in the trench wall, eddied sharply into his
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retreat, to sleep. But not less justified than the advice to bring
his fur coat was his Major's assurance that the attack of the
horrors which had seized him after dinner that day, would pass off
when the waiting was over. Throughout the evening his nerves had
been perfectly steady, and, when in their progress up the
communication trench they had passed a man half disembowelled by a
fragment of a shell, and screaming, or when, as he trod on one of
the uneasy places an arm had stirred and jerked up suddenly through
the handful of earth that covered it, he had no first-hand sense of
horror: he felt rather as if those things were happening not to him
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but to someone else, and that, at the most, they were strange and
odd, but no longer horrible. But now, when reinforced by food
again and comfortable beneath his fur cloak he let his mind do what
it would, not checking it, but allowing it its natural internal
activity, he found that a mood transcending any he had known yet
was his. So far from these experiences being terrifying, so far
from their being strange and unreal, they suddenly became intensely
real and shone with a splendour that he had never suspected.
Originally he had been pitchforked by his father into the army, and
had left it to seek music. Sense of duty had made it easy for him
to return to it at a time of national peril; but during all the
bitter anxiety of that he had never, as in the light of the
perception that came to him now, as the wind whistled round him in
the dim lit darkness, had a glimpse of the glory of service to his
country. Here, out in this small, evil-smelling cavern, with the
whole grim business of war going on round him, he for the first
time fully realised the reality of it all. He had been in the
trenches before, but until now that had seemed some vague, evil
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dream, of which he was incredulous. Now in the darkness the
darkness cleared, and the knowledge that this was the very thing
itself, that a couple of hundred yards away were the lines of the
enemy, whose power, for the honour of England and for the freedom
of Europe, had to be broken utterly, filled him with a sense of
firm, indescribable joy. The minor problems which had worried him,
the fact of millions of treasure that might have fed the poor and
needy over all Britain for a score of years, being outpoured in
fire and steel, the fact of thousands of useful and happy lives
being sacrificed, of widows and orphans and childless mothers
growing ever a greater company--all these things, terrible to look
at, if you looked at them alone, sank quietly into their sad
appointed places when you looked at the thing entire. His own case
sank there, too; music and life and love for which he would so
rapturously have lived, were covered up now, and at this moment he
would as rapturously have died, if, by his death, he could have
served in his own infinitesimal degree, the cause he fought for.
The hours went on, whether swiftly or slowly he did not consider.
The wind fell, and for some minutes a heavy shower of rain plumped
vertically into the trench. Once during it a sudden illumination
blazed in the sky, and he saw the pebbles in the wall opposite
shining with the fresh-falling drops. There were a dozen rifle-
shots and he saw the sentry who had just passed brushing the edge
of his coat against Michael's hand, pause, and look out through the
spy-hole close by, and say something to himself. Occasionally he
dozed for a little, and woke again from dreaming of Sylvia, into
complete consciousness of where he was, and of that superb joy that
pervaded him. By and by these dozings grew longer, and the
intervals of wakefulness less, and for a couple of hours before he
was roused he slept solidly and dreamlessly.
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His spell of duty began before dawn, and he got up to go his
rounds, rather stiff and numb, and his sleep seemed to have wearied
rather than refreshed him. In that hour of early morning, when
vitality burns lowest, and the dying part their hold on life, the
thrill that had possessed him during the earlier hours of the
night, had died down. He knew, having once felt it, that it was
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there, and believed that it would come when called upon; but it had
drowsed as he slept, and was overlaid by the sense of the grim,
inexorable side of the whole business. A disconcerting bullet was
plugged through a spy-hole the second after he had passed it; it
sounded not angry, but merely business-like, and Michael found
himself thinking that shots "fired in anger," as the phrase went,
were much more likely to go wide than shots fired calmly. . . .
That, in his sleepy brain, did not sound nonsense: it seemed to
contain some great truth, if he could bother to think it out.
But for that, all was quiet again, and he had returned to his dug-
out, just noticing that the dawn was beginning to break, for the
clouds overhead were becoming visible in outline with the light
that filtered through them, and on their thinner margin turning
rose-grey, when the alarm of an attack came down the line.
Instantly the huddled, sleeping bodies that lay at the side of the
trench started into being, and in the moment's pause that followed,
Michael found himself fumbling at the butt of his revolver, which
he had drawn out of its case. For that one moment he heard his
heart thumping in his throat, and felt his mouth grow dry with some
sudden panic fear that came from he knew not where, and invaded
him. A qualm of sickness took him, something gurgled in his
throat, and he spat on the floor of the trench. All this passed in
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one second, for at once he was master of himself again, though not
master of a savage joy that thrilled him--the joy of this chance of
killing those who fought against the peace and prosperity of the
world. There was an attack coming out of the dark, and thank God,
he was among those who had to meet it.
He gave the order that had been passed to him, and on the word,
this section of the trench was lined with men ready to pour a
volley over the low parapet. He was there, too, wildly excited,
close to the spy-hole that now showed as a luminous disc against
the blackness of the trench. He looked out of this, and in the
breaking dawn he saw nothing but the dark ground of the dip in
front, and the level lines of the German trenches opposite. Then
suddenly the grey emptiness was peopled; there sprang from the
earth the advance line of the surprise, who began hewing a way
through the entanglements, while behind the silhouette of the
trenches was broken into a huddled, heaving line of men. Then came
the order to fire, and he saw men dropping and falling out of
sight, and others coming on, and yet again others. These, again,
fell, but others (and now he could see the gleam of bayonets) came
nearer, bursting and cutting their way through the wires. Then,
from opposite to right and left sounded the crack of rifles, and
the man next to Michael gave one grunt, and fell back into the
trench, moving no more.
Just immediately opposite were the few dozen men whose part it was
to cut through the entanglements. They kept falling and passing
out of sight, while others took their places. And then, for some
reason, Michael found himself singling out just one of these, much
in advance of the others, who was now close to the parapet. He was
coming straight on him, and with a leap he cleared the last line of
wire and towered above him. Michael shot him with his revolver as
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he stood but three yards from him, and he fell right across the
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parapet with head and shoulders inside the trench. And, as he
dropped, Michael shouted, "Got him!" and then he looked. It was
Hermann.
Next moment he had scaled the side of the trench and, exerting all
his strength, was dragging him over into safety. The advance of
this section, who were to rush the trench, had been stopped, and
again from right and left the rifle-fire poured out on the heads
that appeared above the parapet. That did not seem to concern him;
all he had to do that moment was to get Hermann out of fire, and
just as he dragged his legs over the parapet, so that his weight
fell firm and solid on to him, he felt what seemed a sharp tap on
his right arm, and could not understand why it had become suddenly
powerless. It dangled loosely from somewhere above the elbow, and
when he tried to move his hand he found he could not.
Then came a stab of hideous pain, which was over almost as soon as
he had felt it, and he heard a man close to him say, "Are you hit,
sir?"
It was evident that this surprise attack had failed, for five
minutes afterwards all was quiet again. Out of the grey of dawn it
had come, and before dawn was rosy it was over, and Michael with
his right arm numb but for an occasional twinge of violent agony
that seemed to him more like a scream or a colour than pain, was
leaning over Hermann, who lay on his back quite still, while on his
tunic a splash of blood slowly grew larger. Dawn was already rosy
when he moved slightly and opened his eyes.
"Lieber Gott, Michael!" he whispered, his breath whistling in his
throat. "Good morning, old boy!"
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CHAPTER XVII
Three weeks later, Michael was sitting in his rooms in Half Moon
Street, where he had arrived last night, expecting Sylvia. Since
that attack at dawn in the trenches, he had been in hospital in
France while his arm was mending. The bone had not been broken,
but the muscles had been so badly torn that it was doubtful whether
he would ever recover more than a very feeble power in it again.
In any case, it would take many months before he recovered even the
most elementary use of it.
Those weeks had been a long-drawn continuous nightmare, not from
the effect of the injury he had undergone, nor from any nervous
breakdown, but from the sense of that which inevitably hung over
him. For he knew, by an inward compulsion of his mind that
admitted of no argument, that he had to tell Sylvia all that had
happened in those ten minutes while the grey morning grew rosy.
This sense of compulsion was deaf to all reasoning, however
plausible. He knew perfectly well that unless he told Sylvia who
it was whom he had shot at point-blank range, as he leaped the last
wire entanglement, no one else ever could. Hermann was buried now
in the same grave as others who had fallen that morning: his name
MICHAEL
212
would be given out as missing from the Bavarian corps to which he
belonged, and in time, after the war was over, she would grow to
believe that she would never see him again.
But the sheer impossibility of letting this happen, though it
entailed nothing on him except the mere abstention from speech,
took away the slightest temptation that silence offered. He knew
that again and again Sylvia would refer to Hermann, wondering where
he was, praying for his safety, hoping perhaps even that, like
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Michael, he would be wounded and thus escape from the inferno at
the front, and it was so absolutely out of the question that he
should listen to this, try to offer little encouragements, wonder
with her whether he was not safe, that even in his most depressed
and shrinking hours he never for a moment contemplated silence.
Certainly he had to tell her that Hermann was dead, and to account
for the fact that he knew him to be dead. And in the long watches
of the wakeful night, when his mind moved in the twilight of
drowsiness and fever and pain, it was here that a certain
temptation entered. For it was easy to say (and no one could ever
contradict him) that some man near him, that one perhaps who had
fallen back with a grunt, had killed Hermann on the edge of the
trench. Humanly speaking, there was no chance at all of that
innocent falsehood being disproved. In the scurry and wild
confusion of the attack none but he would remember exactly what had
happened, and as he thought of that tossing and turning, it seemed
to one part of his mind that the innocence of that falsehood would
even be laudable, be heroic. It would save Sylvia the horrible
shock of knowing that her lover had killed her brother; it would
save her all that piercing of the iron into her soul that must
inevitably be suffered by her if she knew the truth. And who could
tell what effect the knowledge of the truth would have on her?
Michael felt that it was at the least possible that she could never
bear to see him again, still less sleep in the arms of the one who
had killed her brother. That knowledge, even if she could put it
out of mind in pity and sorrow for Michael, would surely return and
return again, and tear her from him sobbing and trembling. There
was all to risk in telling her the truth; sorrow and bitterness for
her and for him separation and a lifelong regret were piled up in
the balance against the unknown weight of her love. Indeed, there
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was love on both sides of that balance. Who could tell how the
gold weighed against the gold?
Yet, after those drowsy, pain-streaked nights, when the sober light
of dawn crept in at the windows, then, morning after morning,
Michael knew that the inward compulsion was in no way weakened by
all the reasons that he had urged. It remained ruthless and
tender, a still small voice that was heard after the whirlwind and
the fire. For the very reason why he longed to spare Sylvia this
knowledge, namely, that they loved each other, was precisely the
reason why he could not spare her. Yet it seemed so wanton, so
useless, so unreasonable to tell her, so laden with a risk both for
him and her that no standard could measure. But he no more
contemplated--except in vain imagination--making up some ingenious
story of this kind which would account for his knowledge of
Hermann's death than he contemplated keeping silence altogether.
It was not possible for him not to tell her everything, though,
MICHAEL
213
when he pictured himself doing so, he found himself faced by what
seemed an inevitable impossibility. Though he did not see how his
lips could frame the words, he knew they had to. Yet he could not
but remember how mere reports in the paper, stories of German
cruelty and what not, had overclouded the serenity of their love.
What would happen when this news, no report or hearsay, came to
her?
He had not heard her foot on the stairs, nor did she wait for his
servant to announce her; but, a little before her appointed time,
she burst in upon him midway between smiles and tears, all
tenderness.
"Michael, my dear, my dear," she cried, "what a morning for me!
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For the first time to-day when I woke, I forgot about the war. And
your poor arm? How goes it? Oh, I will take care, but I must and
will have you in my arms."
He had risen to greet her, and softly and gently she put her arms
round his neck, drawing his head to her.
"Oh, my Michael!" she whispered. "You've come back to me. Lieber
Gott, how I have longed for you!"
"Lieber Gott!" When last had he heard those words? He had to tell
her. He would tell her in a minute or two. Perhaps she would
never hold him like that again. He could not part with her at the
very moment he had got her.
"You look ever so well, Michael," she said, "in spite of your
wound. You're so brown and lean and strong. And oh, how I have
wanted you! I never knew how much till you went away."
Looking at her, feeling her arms round him, Michael felt that what
he had to say was beyond the power of his lips to utter. And yet,
here in her presence, the absolute necessity of telling her climbed
like some peak into the ample sunrise far above the darkness and
the mists that hung low about it.
"And what lots you must have to tell me," she said. "I want to
hear all--all."
Suddenly Michael put up his left hand and took away from his neck
the arm that encircled it. But he did not let go of it. He held
it in his hand.
"I have to tell you one thing at once," he said. She looked at
him, and the smile that burned in her eyes was extinguished. From
his gesture, from his tone, she knew that he spoke of something as
serious as their love.
"What is it?" she said. "Tell me, then."
He did not falter, but looked her full in the face. There was no
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breaking it to her, or letting her go through the gathering
suspense of guessing.
MICHAEL
214
"It concerns Hermann," he said. "It concerns Hermann and me. The
last morning that I was in the trenches, there was an attack at
dawn from the German lines. They tried to rush our trench in the
dark. Hermann led them. He got right up to the trench. And I
shot him. I did not know, thank God!"
Suddenly Michael could not bear to look at her any more. He put
his arm on the table by him and, leaning his head on it, covering
his eyes he went on. But his voice, up till now quite steady,
faltered and failed, as the sobs gathered in his throat.
"He fell across the parapet close to me, "he said. . . . "I lifted
him somehow into our trench. . . . I was wounded, then. . . . He
lay at the bottom of the trench, Sylvia. . . . And I would to God
it had been I who lay there. . . . Because I loved him. . . .
Just at the end he opened his eyes, and saw me, and knew me. And
he said--oh, Sylvia, Sylvia!--he said 'Lieber Gott, Michael. Good
morning, old boy.' And then he died. . . . I have told you."
And at that Michael broke down utterly and completely for the first
time since the morning of which he spoke, and sobbed his heart out,
while, unseen to him, Sylvia sat with hands clasped together and
stretched towards him. Just for a little she let him weep his
fill, but her yearning for him would not be withstood. She knew
why he had told her, her whole heart spoke of the hugeness of it.
Then once more she laid her arm on his neck.
"Michael, my heart!" she said.
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